How do they do it? These sad sack, broody troubadours somehow manage to plant a subtle hook into their otherwise melancholic melodies that keeps you coming back for more. Toronto’s Hayden and San Diego’s Greg Laswell have gravelly delivery and a general air of somber introspection surrounding their particular brand of broody poprock.
Having said that, Hayden would be hilarious if he wasn’t so morose. With song titles like “Lonely Security Guard,” Weight of the World,” and “Blurry Nights” he manages to make Morrissey seem cheerful. Some songs are mini-sketches – both “Hollywood Ending” and “Lonely Security Guard” are vignettes performed with cinematic feeling, while others – “No Happy Birthday,” “Home by Saturday,” “Weight of the World” – just channel a sordid sounding sadness. This is not a criticism. I’m totally for sordid sounding sadness sometimes. Others step out of type with a more upbeat sound, if not sentiment. I love the simple piano riff that propels “Damn This Feeling” or distinctive guitar lines that undergird “The Place Where We Lived” and the majestic “Blurry Nights,” a track with ‘hit single’ written all over it. Hayden is currently touring behind a 20th anniversary edition of his first indie cassette tape release Everything I Long For. Hollywood EndingWeight of the WorldDamn This Feeling
Greg Laswell’s early material hardly qualifies as broody at all, just a touch here and there. “That it Moves” and “The One I Love” from 2008’s Three Flights from Alto Nido are hooky with just a hint of darkness. “That it Moves” has a great build up, plateauing into a solid poprock gem. “The One I Love” kicks off cheerily enough then gets its brood on in the chorus. But this year’s Everyone Thinks I Dodged a Bullet is full-on Hayden, including extra gravel in the vocals and some moody electric guitar lines on the catchy title track.
That it MovesThe One I Love
Moody people need money to drown their sorrows. Visit Hayden and Greg Laswell online and give some thought to the kind of scotch your music-appreciating cash would buy.
The good people at 
Butch Young joins a long list of performers transformed by the Beatles and their influence. There is hardly a note of his recent Mercury Man that does not bear the mark of the Fabs. But where he takes that influence is not merely homage – there are some great songs here. The title track has a very 1970s Beatle-influenced sound, a time when so many bands like Badfinger and ELO continued updating the style of the masters. “One Foot In” expands the musical footprint, adding a bit of Beach Boys and a host of other vocally-oriented 1960s bands. “Dime Store Jesus” sounds a bit 10cc to me, in a good way. But my favourite track is, hands down, “Asteroid,” with its whimsical loping pace and great organ, piano and vocal parts.
I love performers with a great range of performance styles. The ‘all caps’ band, the CLIFFS, come from a number of prior musical commitments – The Blurries, Apples in Stereo, Deathray Davies, and more – but none sound like this new venture. The CLIFFS’ new album, Bill, You’re Only Human, is a stripped down punky poprock effort. “Volcano” goes along in an understated way until you get to the chorus, which winds up a great hook through the repetition of the title. Both “Jimmy Monet” and “Future Tense” seem to channel a low key Fountains of Wayne influence to my ears. “Crash” has that distinctive 1970s punky take on early 1960s disaster poprock. Probably my favourite track on the album is “I’m in Love with Tonight.” The title of the song is all the lyrics you get, but it still draws you in with its wonderful arrangement, adding a subtracting layers to good effect.
Rounding things out is Cupid’s Carnival from their recent Everything is Love release. This is a band that wears their Beatles’ influences on both sleeves. A lot of the material here has been released by the same musicians under other names (Cherrystone, Roland Skilton) but not in these versions. This recording really ups the complexity of their Beatles vibe. “Girl” is a perfect example. The opening guitar slide sounds like it was lifted right off George Harrison’s early solo records but the vocal arrangement is more Meet the Beatles or Something New. Wow. These guys know their Beatle motifs and combine and rearrange them in original ways.Girl
… I started this blog, with some trepidation, excitement, and a strong sense of purpose – to let anyone who might stumble across it know about all the great music I’d been finding, particularly those who might think that all the best music was in the past. My point, repeatedly stated over the past year, is that if you love music from 1950s through to the 1990s, people are taking up those influences today in wonderful, creative, and surprising ways. I have always loved all kinds of music, across a host of genres (e.g. rock and roll, country, jazz, etc.), but if I had to boil it all down, my favourite music is built out of a great song, something catchy you can sing on your own without accompaniment and still get a sense of the tune. For me, that has always been best represented in the broad category I call poprock.
In the pantheon of emblematic poprock I would start with Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers, segue to the Beatles and the Byrds, and carry on into the 1970s from there. I got started with my parents’ record collection, which covered most of the classics from the 1950s and 1960s. I was a child of the 1970s and the swan song of top 40 radio. I came of age with New Wave and all the early 1980s alternative scene. My first big discoveries on my own were performers like Elvis Costello, Marshall Crenshaw and Joe Jackson, and bands like XTC, Squeeze and Split Enz. Music has always been a huge part of my life. I started collecting records as teenager and by my late 30s had amassed nearly 6000 pieces of vinyl: 5000 long players and a 1000 45s (I’ve since ‘focused’ the collection down to about 1700 units). There were a few years where I lost touch with a lot of the new music that coming out as I bore down on completing graduate school and getting a permanent job, but I still caught the occasional show or discovered some new band. Over the past few years, I’ve ramped up that process of music discovery with great results.
Since I started this blog a year ago I have managed to stay on target with roughly one blog post per week. I’ve also been in touch with a number of poprock bloggers, who’ve given great advice and suggestions for content. I’ve seen a bevy of live shows over the last twelve months featuring many of the bands I’ve been writing about, one advantage of living in Canada’s biggest city. But my biggest take-away from this experience has been grappling with the enormous surplus of talent out there. The world is full of talented people putting out great stuff, if you can just find it. Our humble efforts here at Poprock Record have been about supporting that process.
In 2015 Declan McKenna broke out of nowhere as a 16-year-old with his homemade single, “Brazil,” a catchy song that is a scathing indictment of the corruption at the core of FIFA and international soccer. Comparisons to Jake Bugg are common, but only for me because they both attempt to give voice to voiceless and take up political themes in an effortless way. His second single and video, “Paracetamol,” took up transgender issues. Part of McKenna’s appeal is the obvious authenticity of his lyrics and performance: imagine a more political Jonathan Richman. His EP Liar contains his first three singles and one more song, “Howl.”
Dylan Gardner loves the Beatles and 1960s garage rock but only the former appears as influence on this first record. Recorded mostly in his bedroom, 2014’s Adventures in Real Time is chock full of poprock hits, if this blog were any arbiter of public consumption. “Let’s Get Started” and “Too Afraid to Love You” were the official videos and singles, and they are great, but my vote for AM radio top 40 perfection goes to “I Think I’m Falling for Something,” a track that kicks off with great keyboards and a nice horn section before settling into a super lurching poprock sound with interesting vocal arrangements. So too does “With a Kiss” bolt out of the gate on its acoustic strumming rhythm and a melodic hook that won’t let you go. “I’m Nothing Without You” has that Beatles majesty, nicely executed on the record but also charmingly performed in his bedroom in a video that has unfortunately disappeared from the internet. Gardner’s Facebook says he working on his second album.
Over to the UK where the Fronteers have been going from strength to strength. When I heard their first single in the summer of 2015, “Youth,” I was impressed with their harmony vocals and folksy rock sound. But that didn’t prepare for what came less than a year later. “Idol” was like a totally different band, though not in a bad way. Great acoustic opener, hypnotic electric lead riff, and more great harmonies, but watch for the surprise bridge which seems to be channeling some spooky Everly Brothers vibe. Then just last month they released an EP, Streets We Were Born In, which ups the rock quotient again with tracks like “Full Moon.”
Summer is slipping away before our very eyes. Time to reach for the beach one more time with tunes that celebrate the sand, sunscreen, and a summer love that probably won’t last much past Labour Day.
Virginia native and L.A. transplant David Brookings cut his teeth on the classics of the poprock. His sound melds the Beatles with the 1970s Beatles-influenced bands like ELO and Badfinger. His previous six albums channel these influences in a catchy DIY sort of way, with great album covers evoking the spirit of the 1960s, and some standout tracks like “Obsessed,” “Dead Battery,” and “If I Don’t Make it Back.” But his latest longplayer, David Brookings and the Average Lookings, represents a career peak, with his finest songs and most impressive performances. “Hearts” is a solid single, featuring an impressive layering of sonic effects in terms of instruments and vocals. I thought it was far and away the obvious track to feature from the album, but the more I listened to “Time to Go” I wasn’t so sure. So they both appear here. Honourable mention to the very catchy “Place We Can Go.”
The arrangements on this Gordy Garris Group album are so subtle, meant to complement and enrich what could essentially be a record of acoustic singer/songwriter tunes. For instance, “Nightfall” starts with a nice acoustic guitar finger roll, which is quickly augmented by a low impact organ undercurrent, and eventually joined by the full band and some nice ‘oohs’ background vocals. 
This unabashed love single to the Ramones by Propeller works at so many levels. It manages to be so Ramones without being just a derivative knock off of that band while also being a solid tune on its own merits. “Turn on the Radio” is featured on Propeller’s latest album, Fall Off the World, which features a cover that is a spot-on reincarnation of the many K-Tel compilation albums (that certainly did not feature the Ramones!) from the 1970s. Other strong tracks include “Wish I Had her Picture,” “She’s So Alive,” and “Can’t Feel These Things.”
Montreal’s Maybelleen have got a unique sound, a blend of 1960s musical motifs (great signature vintage guitars, harmony vocals) with various 1980s synth keyboards, a mix that defies easy categorization. “Bring to Light” is from their debut EP, Gold in Your Hands, a collection of very professional sounding demos. Their first official EP Stereotypes has refined the vocal sound with songs that continue to riff on and develop their hybrid 1960s/1980s sound with the catchy title track,“Models on TV,” and particularly on “To Know Me Better Now.” Their most recent EP In My World has brought the guitars up front and tweaked the vocals to create a more conventional (but still great) poprock sound, as is showcased in “When I’m Right.”
Sometimes a band says, “ya, we’re from Australia” with every line they sing. Perth’s Verge Collection ooze Australia, from their charmingly accented singing to the various Australianisms littered throughout their songs. “Our Place” is a swinging bit of fun that makes you want to hit replay as soon as it ends, with some languid sounding lead guitar and a subtle bed of organ anchoring the song. The single’s B-side “Feel Bad Songs” is also great.
Austin, Texas has so much great music going on, including The Blurries, who kick off their 2011 record Paper Cuts with a track that bolts out of the gate and doesn’t stop. “Little Marie” is driven by a combination of acoustic and electric guitar, with the acoustic anchoring the song and the electric providing its propulsive tension. You can watch the band perform a version of the song for the podcast 
Two Vancouver bands with striking similarities take us in a motherly direction in this post. They were both formed in the mid-2000s and branched out musically from more stripped down roots and acoustic leanings in their early recordings to embrace indie rock, new wave, and even dance influences later on. “Mother” is from Said the Whale’s 2013 album hawaii. While overshadowed somewhat by the 1981-ish, new wave sounding hit single “I Love You,” “Mother” is a solid release in its own right. Kicking off with a rather spare bass and drum sound, the vocals stand out for their effervescent quality, only to break out into a surging chorus laden with great keyboards and guitar lines, while the lyrics perfectly capture the transitional anxiety of young adults as the singer urges “don’t tell my mother till I pull myself together.”
You’ll never see the rock critics expounding on the seminal influence of Simon and Garfunkel to contemporary music – but it is there. Not because S&G broke new ground like the Beatles or the Kinks or the Who. Nor did they exude a counter culture rock persona like the Rolling Stones or Jimi Hendrix. But they did contribute to the unique 1960s synthesis of musical styles, songwriting, and performance that would define the popular song in the decades to come. Paul Simon’s genius was in melding the authenticity of folk music with the more relentless hooks from pop music, cast against a dazzling array of musical backdrops (something more fully exploited in his solo career). But in S&G, his talents produced a unmistakable sound, regardless of the style of the material. That sound can be found all over the contemporary music-sphere.
Portage 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.
Whitehorse 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.
Django 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).
Everything 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.
Poprock Record 