The story of commercial popular music is largely an English-speaking one, at least to those of us living in the English-speaking world. It is a rare thing indeed for a song with even a hint of foreign language content to grace the British or American charts. Yet it always struck me as strange that bands like ABBA would sing in English, given they were from Sweden. But the bottom line on linguistic choice has always been financial. Making records for six million Swedes and few million more in the other Scandinavian countries, or cashing in on a potential market numbering in hundreds of millions? The decision was obviously pretty easy. And so what if ABBA’s early English lyrics were a tad grade school – the hooks were there in abundance! Of course, if one traveled to distant lands in the past you could find bands singing in their native languages, but international travel was more exclusive then and shipping albums home was expensive. But now, with the internet, a veritable United Nations of poprock is just a click away! Today we focus mostly on western Europe but in future I plan to go as far afield as I can find.
Let’s begin with the Dutch. They’ve topped a number of English-speaking charts with songs sung in English. I’m talking huge hits like the Shocking Blue’s “Venus” and Golden Earring’s “Radar Love.” But singing in Dutch? Not so much. That’s a shame because there’s some pretty catchy poprock material sung in that language from The Kik. I swear there is a Beatles laboratory hidden somewhere in Holland that churns out modern-day, throwback-sixties beat groups. Some members of The Kik were also in a Dutch group called The Madd and they produced two great albums sung in English that went nowhere. Reformed as The Kik in 2010 they too started their recording career singing in English but then switched to Dutch. It makes no difference – the hooks these guys lay out are amazing. “Simone” is the calculated pop hit single from the 2012 debut album Springlevend (translation: ‘Alive and Kicking’) but other tracks like “Even Voor Altijd” and “Van Wie Hij Was En Wie Hij Is” demonstrate the band’s melodic depth and command of the mid-1960s British beat sound. Two years later 2 showed the band expanding their sound even further with the Monkees-like “Elektriciteit” and the 1990s swinging poppy number “Cupido.” A brand new album of covers is just coming out (Hertalt!), including a particularly jangly version of the Rembrants’ “I’ll Be There For You,” sung in Dutch. It’s just what your holiday needs! I have to throw in a special mention here for the band’s super b-sides, specifically “Here’s Hoping” (sung in English) and “Bel Mijn Nummer” (b side to “Cupido”).Even Voor AltijdBel Mijn Nummer
The Germans too have had a few popular English-singing exports. Falco and Nena easily come to mind. But singing in German for English-speaking audiences? Only Connie Francis could pull that off. Again, we’re limiting ourselves. Check out what Thees Uhlmann does with healthy dose of Springsteen influence on his two solo albums. “Zum Laichen und Sterben ziehen die Lachse den Fluss hinauf” (whoa, long German titles!) opens with that classic atmospheric Springsteen piano but pumps up the poprock as the song develops. Meanwhile “Die Bomben meiner Stadt” has a totally different melodic vibe. While we’re on German-singing acts let’s slip next door to Austria to check out a song from Wanda, a Vienna-based band who mine a more obvious 1960s beat group sound on “Schickt mir die Post.”
Zum Laichen und Sterben ziehen die Lachse den Fluss hinaufDie Bomben meiner Stadt
On to French – but not France. This time we’ll get the diasporic influences on the language via French-Canadian singer Tremblay. Montreal-based Maxime Desbiens-Tremblay has two albums out and is also a novelist. He leans heavily on acoustic guitar in his particular mix of poprock, clearly evident on “J’suis pas tout seul” from his 2012 debut Ça va, ça va. It’s there too on “Sarah (Avec un H)” but so is the piano on a cut that could easily slip onto Michael Buble album. 2015’s Porcelain toughened up the sound on the opening single “Aime / Pardonne” but the acoustic guitar is still central. He even slips in a bilingual number (so Canadian!) with “Summer Love.”
They say that Spanish is the loving tongue. Well, we certainly feel the love here at Poprock Record where visitors from Spain rank 4th behind the US, UK, and Canada. And why not? Spain has some crazy love going on for all kinds of power pop. So much so that a number of specialty labels focused on the genre are based there. Elefant records is one of them (recent Primitives records have come out under their imprint) and they have released or re-released a host of records by the very modish Los Flechazos. These guys sound like a 1965 London nightclub – if it were located in Spain. They did release one killer EP sung in English (1996’s One More Try) but otherwise their material is sung in Spanish. But you won’t care once you hear the great jumpy rhythm guitar, cool organ and swirl of background vocals. It’s there with the totally 1965 beat sound on “Dejeme en Paz.” Or check the roll out and build up on “Quiero Regresar.” Or there is the more-hard edge, later sixties sound of “Ayer.” Got to sneak another Spanish contribution in here from the great Los Secretos. “Sobre un Vídrío Mojado” is from their 1996 album Grandes Exitos and vibes a bit more of 1980s poprock sound.
Dejeme en PazQuiero RegresarSobre un Vídrío Mojado
If there is one thing people around the work look forward to, its unexpected foreign love, especially in the form of electronic purchases. The Kik, Thees Uhlmann, Wanda, Tremblay, Los Flechazos and Los Secretos would love to see you drop by their internet way stations. Do it now.
An enormous amount of talent cruises through the internet everyday with yours truly discovering barely a smidgen of what’s out there. But there are times when I have to ask myself ‘how did I miss this’? Well, actually, it happens so much we have a whole department looking into it here at Poprock Record.
Fruit Bats is the least forgiveable because we previously featured the band’s delightful “Rainbow Sign” with its great acoustic feel and harmony vocals from 2003’s Mouthfuls. Somehow I missed their most recent album, released just last year. Absolute Loser is a more muscular effort, showcasing a full band sound. “From a Soon-to-Be Ghost Town” ripples along with just a hint of that countrypolitan sound indie bands like so much, with vocals that remind of James Mercer of the Shins. “Humbug Mountain Song” kicks off nicely enough but then suddenly introduces a hypnotic banjo riff that keeps coming back, with a smooth 1970s soft rock chorus. Title track “Absolute Loser” is a slow burn hook, with vocals that remind me of You Won’t’s unusual harmonic charms. All in all, this is one eminently listenable album.From a Soon-to-Be Ghost TownAbsolute Loser
Ok, I can be forgiven for missing The Mayflies U.S.A. because they fall into the power pop ghetto that has long proved a hit with critics but a dud with mainstream audiences, at least in the period when most of their records came out. When guys like Matthew Sweet can barely register in the mainstream, there just isn’t much chance this sort of talent is going to register outside of niche circles. And that is shame because these guys (pop) rock! The songs are hooky and the vocals meld into a special kind of ear candy. Just check out the title track from 2002’s Walking in a Straight Line – churning guitar hooks and pleasantly sibilant vocals galore. Or tune into “The End of Line” from 2000’s The Pity List with its subtle but seductive hook buried at the end of the chorus. I couldn’t hit replay fast enough. “I Just Wanna Be Your Gun” is also pretty special.
How I passed over Pete Droge is more mysterious because I actually have long owned a copy of The Thorns album he recorded with Matthew Sweet and Shawn Mullins. But I think I was going through a pretty heavy Sweet fix at the time and judged the album to be too low key. In any event, I recently stumbled across Droge in an iTunes ‘listeners also bought’ section and haven’t looked back. Droge has five solo albums and a soundtrack that are all pretty good but I find myself really digging 1994’s Necktie Second and 2008’s Under the Waves, the former channeling a mellow Tom Petty vibe while the latter has a strikingly spare acoustic demeanor. 
From Necktie Second “If You Don’t Love Me (I’ll Kill Myself)” reinvents the old “Mockingbird” song in an original way, all sparkling guitar lines and nicely reverby vocals. Meanwhile, I swear “So I Am Over You” comes on like a really great Tom Petty out-take. Fast forward to 2008 and the material from Under the Waves has Droge digging deep into more atmospheric territory on the title track or channeling Paul Simon circa Graceland on “Giving it All Away” with some very ABBA guitar. Even more recently his The Droge and Summer Blend project takes off in another direction, this time a folky/country harmony-rich concoction, with great tracks like “Sad Clown” and “Island.”So I Am Over YouUnder the WavesGive it All AwayIsland
I don’t often get to use a word like ‘redux’ but when I do it’s definitely for collections like this. In Songs, Bond Songs: The Music of 007 twenty-five artists ‘restore, bring back’ and ‘present in a new way’ the entire canon of theme songs from the James Bond movies, with an accent on indie, poprock treatments. Why bother, you might ask? Well the Bond canon is unique in so many ways. The quality of the songs stretching over a half century is surprisingly strong and consistent. And, as is apparent from the performances on this record, they are open to broad and varied re-interpretations. Some performances here are fairly safe and unremarkable but most try to do something original with the basic raw material of their specific Bond song. I won’t comment on everything but rather just highlight what I think are the more unique, sometimes daring, and ultimately single-worthy remakes from the collection.
Trying to separate out the various genres that have contributed to modern poprock is a bit hopeless. Take country, for instance. It’s right there in the rock and roll DNA of Elvis, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, and so many others. But country has a special relationship with poprock due to its buoyant approach to melody. Some of the greats of 1940s and 1950s country were hook masters who knew how to write a tune that would leave people singing in the shower. Merle Travis, the Louvin Brothers, Johnny Horton and, of course, the grandmaster tunesmith, Hank Williams Sr. The country rock of the late 1960s and early 1970s then was really just a return to rock and roll’s roots. And, of course, some country artists that rode the border of country pop and rock and roll never really went away in the 1960s – think the Everly Brothers or Buck Owens. Happily the tradition lives on with more recent acts mining the particular joy that is country poprock. It’s country time!
Australia must be a magical place. So many super creative people live there and they all seem to start a new band every other week. Anthony Bautovitch is the driving force behind The Forresters, just one of many musical projects he’s had a hand in over the years (you might have heard of the Orange Humble Band). Read his blog entries about this project and it’s like all the musical royalty of Australia showed up to do something on these recordings. “Tremblin’’ is from the 2008 debut Skin Deep and strikes a more traditional country vibe but check out the cool horns that slide in half way through. “Are You Ready” is from 2016’s self-titled album The Forresters and it has a stronger poprock feel. The chorus unfolds like a 1960s dream sequence. Hooky goodness here.Are You Ready
I was grooving on Rhett Miller for months before I discovered he was the lead singer for the Old 97s. “Our Love” from 2002’s The Instigator has a nice new wave aura to it, even as it takes the form of a classic country song construction. By contrast, “Lost Without You” from 2012’s The Dreamer has a more traditional country feel, if channeled a bit through Wilco. Improving with age (if that’s possible), Miller has some killer recent material, including the duet with Madison King, “Feel Like Fallin’ in Love,” and the recent collaboration with Black Prairie, 2015’s The Traveler. Love “Most in the Summertime” with its great lilting chorus line ‘Don’t give up … on me.’ The pause really makes the hook work.Our LoveLost Without You
I was digging the Steve Deaton Three’s self-titled album from 2015 when I hit their cover of Buck Owen’s “Tall Dark Stranger.” How could I know I’d be in for the definitive treatment of the song? SDT ramp it up just enough to capture the melodic magic that was always there but latent in the rather languid original version. Really, I’m surprised Dwight Yoakam didn’t cog onto this great opportunity. But just to show that these guys are not just poprock rodeo kings, check out their fabulous, driving should-be hit single, “Open My Eyes.” Not country, but a poprock spectacular single. And these are not the only charms this album contains.
At a recent house concert in Toronto, the Sam Weber band performed “All Your Favourite Bands.” It being a house concert, the song ended and I asked them about it – and discovered the definitely alt-country/folk sound of Dawes. Early recordings like “When My Time Comes” from 2009 North Hills has the poetic charm of Bruce Springsteen’s first album while “If I Wanted Someone” from 2011’s Nothing is Wrong sounds more late period Eagles. But Dawes are hard to peg, with 2013’s Stories Don’t End serving up the very Steely Dan-ish “From a Window Seat” and their most recent, 2016’s We’re All Gonna Die, throwing in a bit more FM rock a la “Rocky Mountain Way” guitar and late Doobie Brothers vocals on “Roll With the Punches.”If I Wanted SomeoneRoll With the Punches
The Jayhawks were there when alt country hit the indie rock mainstream along with Wilco, Blue Rodeo and many others. We’re not going to play the obvious ones from the 1990s. These guys are masters for a reason – they’ve continued to put out solid recordings, as “She Walks in So Many Ways” from 2011’s Mockingbird Time showcases nicely. The song has a very Everly Brothers’ “Bowling Green” vibe to my ears. Oh, what the hell. “It’s Up to You” from 1997’s Sound of Lies is a pretty sweet album cut.She Walks in So Many WaysIt’s Up To You
Last up is a band I just discovered this last week, San Francisco’s Midnight North. “The Highway Song” is a peppy poprock number sweet enough to appeal to any Dolly Parton fan, with a melody that is nicely echoed by some trebly lead guitar. Great lyrics here: “So meet me on a highway … where we can sing some tunes like Johnny and June ..” The whole of their most recent album, 2017’s Under the Lights, is pretty strong, with “Greene County” turning the classic leaving scenario on its head while “Little Black Dog” harkens back to a more traditional country sound.
Summer’s here and the time is right for some treats. No, not the ice cream truck – musical treats. What follows are some bands I missed the first time around but have come to know through a host of fantastic Facebook music groups. Accent on melody, harmony and hooks!
Coming back more to the present, check out Smith & Hayes lightly swinging poprock gem from their 2014 album People All Over the World, “Slow Down.” These guys emote some pretty impressive 1970s soft rock chops, a time when melody seemed inoffensive but was actually ear worm intensive. Previous albums by the band (e.g. 2007’s Changed By a Song) showcased their command of the late Beatles era sound and that work undergirds this single. From the harmonica opening, to the acoustic guitar lead lines, to the ever so subtle and building vocal hooks, you’ll be hitting repeat on this one.Smith & Hayes – Slow Down
Our last treat is a bit of an outlier for North Carolina’s Dillon Fence, a group whose material usually had a bit more bite. But “Bite of an Apple” is a delightful vocally-focused lilting tune that really takes off with some nice interplay amongst vocal lines, all over top of a consistent ringing rhythm guitar. The song appears on the 2004 collection Best +. Though the band’s recording career only spanned 1991-94, this song was one of a number specially recorded in the early 2000s for this release.Dillon Fence – Bite of an Apple
Putting a famous name in your song title would seem to be a sure fire way to have a hit. Kim Carnes’ “Bette Davis Eyes” or Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” readily come to mind. But really, those are the exceptions. A quick search of the internet actually turns up a whole bevy of celebrity names on songs, mostly on the indie side of things, most of them album cuts. So why do bands do it? Homage? Satire? Or are they just as celebrity obsessed as everyone else? The French duo Please was formed and recorded a song with the sole explicit intent of getting a response from Paul McCartney – not that Paul appeared to notice! The range of material covered in this post gives us a bit of all these approaches, from hero worship, to ridicule, to little more than just mentioning the celebrity name.
Some bands throw their guitars to the front of mix or offer up some hooky guitar lick that drives the song. This post features songs from bands where the guitar attack is a key part of the charm but none take up the challenge in quite the same way.
Poole’s “Supermerica” blasts open with a guitar storm not unlike more than few singles from Fountains of Wayne but the vocals have more of a Bob Mould solo tinge. The band put out three albums in the 1990s but didn’t really take off, sadly, as their 1995 debut Alaska Days is fantastic and features this song. The Travoltas drop into “I’m Sorry” with crunchy load of rhythm guitar before settling into a great poprock sound that the Dutch seem to have patented in recent years with bands like this one and Tommy and the Rockets. 
This song has nice of dose of Beach Boys harmony about two-thirds of the way through, not surprisingly given this 2002 album title is Endless Summer. The band’s most recent album, Until We Hit the Shore, continues to mine this beach-infused party punk sound. 
Australia’s Genes or The Genes (depending on the recording) make their acoustic guitars jump out of the speakers on tracks like “A Smile Will Do” and “I Know.” Our featured track is from their 1995 record, Buy a Guitar, and the whole record is pretty consistently acoustic guitar dominant in ways you didn’t really think possible. Of the three bands, only the Travoltas seems serious about promoting their music online. You will search in vain for much info or a website for the other two.I’m SorryA Smile Will Do
Of the bands featured in this post, The Ivins probably most fit the bill of potential mainstream rock success with “Roam the World” from their new album, The Code Duello. 
By contrast, Odd Robot give off an indie vibe both in terms of their guitar sound but also their vocal style. I love how it all comes together on our featured song “Take With Two White Pills” from their recent album A Late Night Panic. The guitars and vocals are some great poprock, tweaked with just a hint of that discordant indie élan. Wrapping up this post is recovering noise punk band, Terry Malts. I say ‘recovering’ because the boys appear to be changing their stripes with this most recent single “It’s Not Me” but there are indications that old habits die hard. 
The song opens with a crisp lead guitar line that loops around as the main hook of the tune while the vocals are bit more shoegaze. It’s a really great poprock single but it is about the only one in their extensive catalogue. Ok, I shouldn’t be greedy, one song is better than none. However, when I saw the band recently in Toronto even this song got the noise punk treatment. Would love to see more songs in this vein from the band.
It was 1982. I was 17, gay as springtime, and loved rock and roll. Musically at that time I would find myself caught between different worlds – there really wasn’t any place to call home. That same year a friend of mine and I snuck into our first gay bar. I thought it was going to be great, to finally be somewhere full of other gay people. But I just couldn’t get past the terrible music. It was all tuneless dance beats, nary a guitar or a melodic hook in sight. I thought of myself as pretty well informed about all kinds of music even then but all night I didn’t recognize a single song. Years later I would come to appreciate why gay popular culture had evolved as it had, why a certain kind of music dominated the scene then. But at the time I experienced it as incredibly alienating. Just another place I didn’t fit in.
And then came The Smiths. There may have been acts that I liked more at the time but none affected me as profoundly as this Manchester quartet. I found a copy of “What Difference Does it Make” in the discard pile at my radio broadcasting school and it blew my head off. The guitar hook immediately had my full attention but the lyrics were also startling – this was my life in a rock and roll song, something that had never happened before. I immediately set out to find more and picked up the BBC sessions/compilation album Hatful of Hollow. The fall of 1984 was all Smiths, all the time. The songs were so obviously about working class gay experience – “William, It Was Really Nothing,” “This Charming Man,” “Handsome Devil,” etc. – that it was painfully embarrassing to see Morrissey equivocate about his sexuality in later interviews. British artists in the 1980s seemed divided about taking a stand on gay identity with Morrissey and the Pet Shops Boys avoiding the issue while others like Bronksi Beat wrote powerfully direct songs like “Small Town Boy.” Later Smiths albums were definitely more oblique about sexuality, but it didn’t matter. The early recordings broke through a barrier of rock and roll masculinity, proving to be as exciting as any previous three chord wonder. Others would take note.
Many years later a 
With seven albums of original material there is simply too much to review here but I could easily single out a host of songs from across their catalogue. From the early period I would note the above-mentioned songs from Undressed, “Don’t Be So Sure” and “Kevin” from 1996’s Wish I’d Taken Pictures, and “Sweet Insecurity” and “Used to Turn Me On” from 1998’s Absurd Pop Song Romance. The band branches out stylistically in the new century with some new guitar sounds and song structures. 2003’s Total Entertainment comes on like a rush of adrenaline with a new sonic mix on tracks like “When He Comes Home,” “Not Good Enough for You,” and “First Betrayal,” while 2009’s That’s So Gay pumps the politics quotient on “Some of My Best Friends” and the ‘not taking ourselves too seriously’ factor on “Dirty Young Man” and “Pat Me on the Ass.” 2016’s Quite Contrary album mimics the cover of their Wish I’d Taken Pictures record released twenty years earlier, replacing the strapping lads of the original with the band’s now aging selves, though they still seem to be cavorting and having a good time. The song themes too reflect their present gay circumstances with issues like the ongoing religious attacks on queers in the US in “Blame the Bible” or aging in “(Is This What It’s Like) Getting Old.” Being from Canada, I have to high five Pansy Division’s ode to our great white north, “Manada” which manages to name check a host of Canadian cities and laud out boys, with versions in both English and French! These guys are a class act.
In the end, the question remains: is it really that important whether a band is gay or not? Yes and no. As I’ve grown older, more comfortable and confident about who I am, I don’t necessarily need to be surrounded by reflections of myself. I love all kinds of music regardless of sexuality or any other kinds of identity markings. But when we are young it is terribly important to see ourselves in popular culture. To be invisible in the world is to be invisible to ourselves. To have our hopes and dreams, heartaches and disappointments given expression in culture is to be part of the broader world. Indeed, to identify across our differences requires first that those differences be articulated. Perhaps it is easier for a rock and roll gay boy today. I hope so, though we should never underestimate how hard it is to be different. Despite the gains in social tolerance, western societies remain profoundly conformist in a host of ways.
What is it with guys and record collections? While I think things have changed a bit recently, coming of age in the 1980s the record store and music obsessions were predominantly male preserves. Nobody captured it better than Nick Hornby in the first chapter of High Fidelity, which opens with the male protagonist deciding for the umpteenth time to reorganize his record collection, this time in the order he purchased them. I remember looking up from the book thinking ‘somebody’s been watching me …’
So here are two songs that capture the traditional range of views about women and record collections. In one, the singer is delighted to find a girl with a serious record collection, noting she “blew me away, with her 45s, they’re all alphabetized …” But in the other, the narrator “did a quick inspection and found [her] ELO” and dumps her, directing her to “take your record collection and go.” In either case, the serious female record collector is either a surprise or unthinkable. Yet both songwriters are clearly mocking this sort of narrow thinking. 
Eytan Mirsky has a large body of hilarious, self-mocking poprock. One album features a pathetic looking Mirsky slouching in a chair as some girlfriend’s luggage is heading for the door – the album title? Was it Something I Said? On his song “Record Collection” (from Get Ready for Eytan!) the shallowness of his male narrator deciding to dump the girl he’s moved in with over some supposed musical indiscretions is both mocked and yet somehow also sadly believable. Meanwhile, producer extraordinaire Fernando Perdomo offers up two distinctly different versions of his charming “Girl with a Record Collection,” one leaning on a jangle poprock sound while the other exploits a more poppy arrangement.
I wonder sometimes if the mail person has mistaken my address for Quality Street because the submissions arriving in the Poprock Record mailbag have been pretty spectacular. This week’s selections run the gamut of cabaret pop, textured top 40, straight up party rock and roll, and punky riffsters.
The tuneful Adam Merrin (we featured him 
The new record from Tiny Animals comes a long six years after their last long player. To make up for lost time, they have crafted a full blown concept album, Such Stuff That Dreams Are Made On, that takes us through a night of dreaming and the bleary, sometimes nonsensical imagery that accompanies sleep (or the lack thereof). As with previous Tiny Animals albums, the sound is crisp and finely textured, often built up layer by sonic layer. The songs are sequenced seamlessly without break but some contributions are more single-ready (some more experimental) than others. I would send radio “She’s Gonna Find Out” with its quirky and catchy opener, the hooky “Stalker” which features some great vocal effects, the strolling-on-a-sunny-day “Wait, Wait, Wait,” and the band’s own choice for first release and video, “Up, Up, and Away.” And in something totally unrelated to this release, check out the band’s hilarious medley of 1980s sitcom theme songs!She’s Gonna Find OutUp, Up, and Away
The Popravinas have a easygoing, melodic rock n’ roll sound – they perform like they’ve been playing together forever. Their sound combines both acoustic and electric guitars, punchy lead lines, AM transistored vocals, a bit of California country rock at times, and a general party vibe. The whole album is enjoyable but “Santa Monica Moon,” “Wow,” and “Top of the Heartache” are stand out tracks for me. Still, if I had pick something for a single I think I’d go with “Alone Ain’t So Bad” with its slightly stronger edge of rock and roll insurgency, nice vocal arrangement, and just a bit of banjo. Hit play and let the beer flow.
We torque up the rock quotient with selections from Picnic Tool’s tart and saucy EP Einstein. The title track is a talky, rumbly rock workout full of hilarious asides, while “Chinese Heart” has a more spare sound, held together by a strong, hooky lead guitar line. By comparison “I Love the Truth” sounds more conventional if only because it features actual singing along with some nice harmonica breaks, built on a great neo-1950s music bed. Things wrap up with the fun “… About Gurls,” a crisp new wavey number full of super riffs. And then, it’s over. Even for an EP Einstein ends all too soon.
Dramatic, almost Queen-like in its changes and intensity, V Sparks grabs you and doesn’t let go on its New Sensation EP. While the record has a number of strong songs, I remain most captivated by “Death of a Star.” From the opening keyboards, the song twists and turns so often you may feel it has lost its way. But when it hits the chorus you’re in a melodic sweet spot that you just don’t want to end. A remarkable effort that makes you wonder where this band will go next.
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