Category Archives: Poprock Themepark

On location in Canada: 100 Mile House, Portage and Main, and Whitehorse

22 Tuesday Mar 2016

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Let’s hit the road, Canada-style (though we’ll linger mostly in the west). Three bands, three locations: 100 Mile House, Portage and Main, and Whitehorse.london-geographical-institute_the-peoples-atlas_1920_dominion-of-canada-with-newfoundland_3992_3012_600

I’ve spent a lot of time passing through 100 Mile House over the years, as a kid living in the interior (Williams Lake) and north (Cassiar) of British Columbia, on my way to and from my first commercial radio job (Smithers), or visiting my in-laws (Prince George). 100 miles from where, you might ask? The answers lie back in the mid-19th century gold rush. 100 Mile House, the band, is based in Edmonton, Alberta and channel a quiet folky sound, for the most part. But “Last Call” is a bit more upbeat with some nice banjo and a great sing-along quality.

2496764923_9ebc4aba00_mPortage and Main is a downtown Winnipeg intersection, which turned 150 years old just last month. Portage and Main, the band, reside in Vancouver and sport a laid-back country feel on a lot of their material but “Better Man” breaks out from the pack with a Blue Rodeo-like punch: great organ, super electric guitar lines, catchy tune.

$T2eC16J,!zUE9s38-IrJBRtz6QL4Zg~~60_35Whitehorse is the capital of the Yukon territory and the largest town in Canada’s north. It boasts 20 hours of sunlight on summer days. Whitehorse, the band, can be found in Hamilton, Ontario, offering up a sound that borrows from roots and vintage 1950s twang electric guitar but with songs that defy categorization. “Sweet Disaster” is from their 2015 Leave No Bridge Unburned album: a cool mood piece that builds from some sparse drums, piano and rumbly electric guitar into a breakout chorus.

Track down 100 Mile House, Portage and Main, and Whitehorse on the internet in all the usual places.

Seeing double: Django Django and Everything Everything

12 Saturday Mar 2016

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Bands so great, they named them twice: Django Django and Everything Everything. django-django_2385694bDjango Django caught my ear for their totally unique songs and sound – one part New Order bass synth, another part oddly retuned Brothers Four vocals, strung together with some killer Ventures-like guitar lines. It all sounds vaguely familiar while being completely original. It is hard to single out just a few songs to feature from their records, despite the fact that it is still a rather sparse catalogue (just two albums, an EP, and some remixes).

2012’s self titled debut album showcases all the band’s strengths in instrumentation, songwriting and clever vocal interplay. “Hand of Man” has the warm acoustic guitar and harmony vocals of a new millennium folk sound. “Hail Bop” brings out the synth but then surprises us by adding some bright and sparkly electric guitar.“Life’s a Beach” reinvents the party surf sound, with airy vocals riding a great set of trebly guitar riffs. Hand of Man  They followed this with the masterful Born Under Saturn in 2015, an album with even more surprising twists and turns than their debut. “Reflections” never hits a false note: electronica as if it were indie poprock. And there is something about “First Light” that reminds of this 1970s Light Brite commercial.

Everything-Everything-January-2013Everything Everything are another band with a unique sound that attend closely to songwriting, taking songs places you don’t expect. Their best material builds out a song from some interesting ideas, putting them together and taking them apart repeatedly. Key examples would include “Kemosabe” and “Duet” from 2013’s Arc. The transitions between the verses and pre-chorus and chorus of the former are exquisite, pivoting on careful vocal arrangements and the word ‘hey’. The latter kicks off with a string section that reminds me of Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting” in general ambience, transitioning on the phrase “but I don’t know what’s real or what’s going on” into a very different sounding song, then shifting again into the chorus. 2015’s Get to Heaven continues to develop their sound with great singles like “Distant Past” and “Regret” but the song that really stuck in my head was the more unusual “Spring / Summer / Winter / Dread” with its intimations of both joy and dread. There is something 1980s going on with it, though I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.

Django Django and Everything Everything are bands whose material is off the beaten track of everyday music, and thus benefit from repeated listening. Find them on their websites and/or Facebook pages.

Kids today: Zeus, Fein, Tiny Animals, and Farewell Flight

16 Tuesday Feb 2016

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4d2660c72722dbea504db6b0882dd079I was one of those armchair parents with all the answers about how to bring up children before I was actually responsible for any. But parenting is more exhausting, exhilarating and unpredictable than anything I have ever done. Nobody really admits how complicated raising kids can be. Nor are we very honest about what childhood is really like for either the kids or the parents, as most accounts are either cloaked in denial or sentimentality. When it comes to music, songs about kids are some of the worst. Happily, the four songs featured here either commit to having fun, being not that serious, or do something unusual.

Toronto’s Zeus kick-starts things with “Kindergarten” (from their 2010 album Say Us) where the narrator appears to be a particularly eloquent five-year-old who doesn’t want to hurt the other kids in school but fears he can’t hold it together in an ‘appropriate behaviour’ sort of way. The song draws you in with its slightly warped narrative, a killer piano riff and some great background vocals. Zeus’ most recent LP, 2014’s Classic Zeus, confirms that our featured song is not an outlier in their catalogue – these guys are delightfully weird.Kindergarten

Fein’s 2014 single “#Grownupz” sneaks up on the listener with some fairly conventional synth-pop build up only to drop a chorus that is highly addictive. While the sentiment is conventional – ‘Daddy I don’t want to grow up’ – the reason is stark: ‘grownups are all sad’. Ouch. The idea and the hook will stay with you.

Both Tiny Animals and Farewell Flight use a kids motif for more typical escapism – to escape the bonds of adulthood for some more allegedly authentic moment: teenhood. Tiny Animals warn “Youth Today” not to lose something important from their youth, though just what it is seems a bit vague. Though this track is from their 2009 album Sweet Sadness, according to their Facebook page the band is putting the finishing touches on a new release right now.Farewell Flight’s “Teenager” is from their most recent LP, 2014’s I Was a Ghost, a straight-up poprock recovery of a lost sense of youthful, adrenaline-fueled excitement.

Find out more about Zeus, Fein, Tiny Animals, and Farewell Flight on their webpages and Facebook accounts.

What the world needs now is love: Tom Speight, Great Big World, and Avalanche City

12 Friday Feb 2016

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photo-1437935593714-0e005a38bf51A statement that seems as obvious today as when Bacharach and David wrote it in 1965. As the crushing weight of refugees from the world’s war zones threatens to overwhelm the goodwill of the West’s welfare states, we need love to help find a safe space for the displaced of our times, the children, their parents, and those without family or friends. Our three contributions focus on that ever so scarce commodity that cannot really be priced: love.

Tom Speight is out of England, has opened for the likes of Jake Bugg, and here offers us a lighthearted plea for a “Little Love.”

Great Big World made a big splash with “Say Something” from their debut album Is There Anyone Out There? but the range of material was actually much greater, featuring a number of solid poprock songs. Their new album is cast more narrowly in the ‘Say Something’ vein but good songs abound, including the beautiful “Hold Each Other” and “Kaleidoscope.”   Great Big World – Hold Each Other  

In addition to the album version of “Hold Each Other” I had to feature their duet with the PS22 Children’s Choir from Staten Island, New York, where they also briefly talk about the song and what it means.

The last song is from New Zealand’s Avalanche City, “Love Love Love.” The Kiwis sent this straight to number one, sensible people that they are. So feel the love, and act on it.

Find out more about Tom Speight, Great Big World, the PS22 Children’s Choir, and Avalanche City on their websites or Facebook pages.  Great Big World will be appearing in Toronto March 1, 2016 at the Mod Club for an all ages show.

Holiday poprock

23 Wednesday Dec 2015

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19570000_Captain_Santa_Claus-Bobby_HelmsThe holiday music scene is a bloated market, artificially inflated by the pushback of the start of the Xmas season to sometime shortly after midnight on November 1st. Department stores, malls and elevators everywhere crave more songs to wallpaper two months of shopping with holiday music. Still, despite the saturation, I love Xmas music. My collection has both old and new contributions and a surprising number of b-sides. For instance, a top ten choice for me is the flip side of Bobby Helm’s “Jingle Bell Rock,” a space age number called “Captain Santa Claus.” Santa’s sleigh breaks down, the elves build a rocket ship, you get the picture. But rather than simply being a novelty cash grab, it’s actually a decent song. Another great b-side is the backing track to John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas,” performed by Yoko Ono: “Listen the Snow is Falling.” Ok, that one will be more controversial – but I like it.

The internet is crawling with holiday music playlists and definitive collections of holiday music from every era and style imaginable – so I won’t do something like that here. Instead, I’ll just riff on the theme with a few choice poprock selections.

fountains-of-wayne-i-want-an-alien-for-christmas-1997Many people are familiar with Fountains of Wayne’s “I Want an Alien for Christmas” but I prefer their more subtle ruminations in “The Man in the Santa Suit” from their 2005 rarities and b-sides collection Out-of-State Plates. The song has great hooks but it is FOW’s unerring ability to capture the social ennui of the holidays that sets it apart. Everybody in the song – from the boozy mall Santa-for-hire to the vomitous and unhappy children – is trying but not really succeeding in living up to the joyous demands of the season.

 Fountains of Wayne – The Man in the Santa Suit

For a rockier tune, Best Coast and Wavves “Got Something for You” has more of a ‘buzz guitar with dreamy vocals’ vibe. On the poppier side, before he fronted the Eels, Mark Everett was known simply as ‘E’ and offered up more crafted poprock than his band’s later edgier material. “Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas” harkens back to his E rather than Eels’ days. 220px-ChristmaswithweezerComing back to edgy, Weezer transforms “Come All Ye Faithful” to bring out the great pop elements of the song with a treatment that reminds me of Me First and the Gimme Gimmes’ cheeky punk-pop makeovers of classic poprock songs. For some Canadian content, The Kings were a Toronto band best known for their 1980 hit “This Beat Goes On/Switching to Glide” but on a follow up EP they performed their own holiday number, “This Christmas” which I always thought warranted more attention.

 

Weezer – Come All Ye Faithful

E – Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas

The Kings – This Christmas

frozen-the-genuine-fakesTo wrap up, three more recent songs, one by the Scottish band Dropkick, another by Sweden’s The Genuine Fakes, and the last from North Carolina’s The Rosebuds. Dropkick’s “When Santa Comes Around” is from their strong holiday EP, 25th December, while The Genuine Fakes offer up their poprock reinvention of “Do You Want to Build a Snowman,” originally featured in the movie Frozen. The last song here I heard on an holiday themed episode of The Flash and it stuck in my head so much that I tracked it down online: the Rosebuds “I Hear (Click, Click, Click).”

You can find the artists featured in this post here: Fountains of Wayne, Best Coast, Wavves, Eels, Weezer, The Kings, Dropkick, The Genuine Fakes, and The Rosebuds.

Up in smoke: Jeremy Fisher and Darwin Deez

14 Wednesday Oct 2015

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Jeremy_Fisher_-_Goodbye_Blue_MondayAlong with drugs, hard liquor and sex, cigarettes are a staple motif of the rock and roll imaginary. But poprock has typically taken a lighter approach to vice. Cigarettes appear as metaphors for both desire and dysfunctional relationships, sometimes in the same song. Jeremy Fisher’s amazing 2007 album, Goodbye Blue Monday, features a great cigarette song where the protagonist likens himself to a cigarette for his intended love: “Light me up and get on with it; I’ll be hard to forget; good or bad I’m just a habit.” Hardly seems like a strong way to sell yourself but Jeremy seems to be privileging results here at any cost. The video below became widely popular, even if the single and its album did not race up the charts the way they should have.

        Jeremy Fisher website

darwin-deezOn “Last Cigarette” Darwin Deez’s lead singer strikes a different pose, alternating between telling himself he’s quitting but then opting for ‘one last cigarette,’ with shifts in focus illustrated with clever wordplay. But is the song about breaking up with somebody or just something, e.g. his cigarettes? I’m not sure – the ambiguity is part of the song’s charm.  In any event, this is a standout track from an already impressive new album, Double Down. The band comes to Toronto December 12 for a show at The Drake Hotel.

Darwin Deez website

Poprock versus power pop

27 Sunday Sep 2015

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On the blogosphere there is already a clearly demarked niche music genre that combines melodic pop melodies with the classic rock and roll combo of electric guitars, bass and drums: power pop. Said to have been coined by no less an authority than Pete Townsend of The Who, the term ‘power pop’ is now applied to any band with jangly guitars, swooping background harmonies, and a strong melodic hook. My blogroll features two such sites (Absolute Powerpop and Powerpopaholic) and there are many more. So why cast my efforts under a different label like poprock? Well, simply put, I think poprock is a broader, more inclusive term. Or, to put it another way, while all of power pop could be considered a form of poprock, not all poprock would be characterized as power pop.

For many bloggers, power pop has become a kind of music esthetic: a certain kind of guitar sound, a particular combination of instruments and vocals, etc. Poprock, by contrast, is less rigid. It is less a genre than a sensibility, crossing over different styles. Sure it is defined by strong melodies and as a category it would make little sense if it didn’t relate to the rock and roll cannon. But rock and roll itself was a bastard child of multiple influences: south Chicago electric blues, Appalachian mountain fiddle solos and harmony vocals, western swing, and so on. What differentiates its many sub-genres is the balance of influences. Thus poprock takes a bit more of the swing and country than the blues while still set within the classic rock and roll combo. Here I’m thinking of Buddy Holly, the Beatles, the Steve Miller band (in the hits era), Marshall Crenshaw, The Smithereens, and, more recently, Bleachers.

So don’t get me wrong – I love power pop. It’s just that I like a lot of other things too.Bleachers website