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Matt Pryor, Pansy Division, Rob Clarke and the Wooltones, Ryan Allen and his Extra Arms, Summer Magic
What awaits us in 2019? Well, if 2018 is anything to go by it’s gonna be a year full jangly guitars, blissed out harmony vocals, rocking rhythm sections, and hooks, hooks, hooks. Fads change but these essential elements combined together will always have an audience – thank goodness! On to the business at hand: I love timely themes so today is all about new year’s – in song, of course.
Matt Pryor gets us into the right frame of mind with “Totally New Year” from his 2008 album Confidence Man. Basic message? Take up the new in the new year and move on from the ‘bones the closet may hold.’ That’s not far off Ryann Allen’s sentiment on “New Year’s Day” where everybody deserves the chance at renewal that ‘new’ promises. ‘Don’t let another year slip away …’ indeed. Taking up the tempo a bit Summer Magic offer us a shimmering “New Year’s Day Surprise” via their unique brand of mellow psychedelic pop. Shifting into full on wistful, Rob Clarke and the Wooltones channel the Beach Boys from their fab holiday EP Bring Me the Wooltones This Year! with “New Year New Day.” Stepping on the queercore pedal to wrap this up, a great tune from the super Pansy Division comeback album, Quite Contrary, “Kiss Me at Midnight (New Year’s Eve).”
Matt Pryor – A Totally New YearSummer Magic – New Year’s Day Surprise
I hope one of your new year’s resolutions is to increase your support for all this great music. Hop on over to Matt Pryor, Ryan Allen and his Extra Arms, Summer Magic, Rob Clarke and the Wooltones, and Pansy Division with your e-wallet and get this year started right!
Christmas music gets a bad wrap (pun intended). Some people seem to think that you can take any old song and throw a seasonal reference in and – voila! – holiday classic. Hardly. Every year an ocean of new Christmas songs hit the holiday beach but few have any staying power. There is something inexplicably magical about the combination of tune, sentiment, and bells that maketh music genuinely seasonal. Kinda like if tinsel and marzipan had a soundtrack. Fortunately, there are a few tunesmiths who still understand how to work the formula, with some of the finest featured here on our now annual holiday music post!
Nine. I don’t why or how I settled on that number but my three previous holiday music posts have all featured nine artists. Weird. Well, I’m not one to needlessly buck tradition so here’s nine more … starting with the amazing Lannie Flowers. Flowers is a longtime veteran of the power pop/indie music scene, charming audiences with his consistently Beatlesque melodic hooks. He returns this year with a remixed version of his 2013 holiday release, “Christmas Without You,” a song that nicely combines jangle with just a hint of country. Next up is a very modern take on seasonal themes, namely, that surely Joseph would have had some doubts about just what was going on with Mary and their miracle baby. Only the New Pornographers could pull off such content and they do on “Joseph, Who Understood,” a new holiday, sing-along classic. Proving their recent comeback Good Times! album was no fluke, the Monkees return this year with a whole album of festive music, with a similar crew of indie pop royalty providing the tunes and musical direction. There’s plenty of good stuff here but “The House of Broken Gingerbread” stands out for me as a superior poprock tune, written by celebrated author Michael Chabon and FOW’s Adam Schlesinger. I’m kinda cheating a bit with this next contribution from Gregory Pepper who just released his holiday-themed four song EP Tsundere. I’m treating his effort like a double-A sided effort, but one with four songs. Pepper’s work sounds deceptively simple but melodically and lyrically he’s a master of so many genre styles and a brilliantly funny and smart lyricist. Spend some time with these tunes. Anybody who can song-check both Macca (“Secret Satan”) and the mopey one (“Home Alone”) knows what he’s doing!Lannie Flowers – Christmas Without YouThe New Pornographers – Joseph, Who UnderstoodThe Monkees – The House of Broken Gingerbread
Digging a bit deeper into our Christmas music bag, Pugwash prove they are the deserving inheritors of XTC’s brand of hooky, intelligent indie poprock with “Tinsel and Marzipan,” capped with a darling Irish-accented child at the end! Crossing the water to Liverpool Rob Clarke and the Wooltones Mersey up the Christmas music scene with a whole album of festiveness on Bring Me the Wooltones This Year! It’s a very Beatles-ish collection of serious and not so serious contributions, with new songs and old faves. The double-A single for me would be “Another Wooltones Xmas Record/Santa Claus.” It can’t be a Christmas tune-age roundup without a tender ballad of seasonal longing so now we head a bit north to Glasgow to hear from The Pooches and their simple song of needing to be with someone as the yuletide comes, “Christmas, With You.” Both stark and moving. Super poprock stars Fun. haven’t put out much in terms of albums but they did put out a holiday single shortly after their first album. “Believe in Me” bears all the hallmarks of that band’s winning formula: intriguing change ups in the song structure, toy piano solos, and plenty of hooks of course.Pugwash – Tinsel and MarzipanThe Pooches – Christmas (With You)Fun. – Believe in Me
Wrapping up this year’s holiday blog post (literally this time), something more traditional. Well, sort of. Quiet Company love the holidays and we’ve featured their stellar coverage of the traditional canon before. Now they’re back with a timely release that captures the distemper of the times with Baby It’s Cold War Outside. With song titles like “Merry Christmas, The President is Terrible” and “Alone on Christmas (You’re Going to Die)” the sense of seasonal dread really comes through. But the traditional themes of hope are there too with “Little Drummer Boy” and particularly on their original reworking of “Carol of the Bells/Setting the Trap.”
In 1970 Decca put out The World of the Zombies, a compilation that leaned heavily on material from the band’s 1965 English debut, Begin Here, right down to re-using the original cover. My parents bought it and for a time the Zombies were to me as important a part of the 1960s rock and roll cannon as the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Rolling Stones. And yet they were different, exuding a stylish, jazz-infused cool all their own, no doubt due to Colin Blunstone’s breathy vocals and Rod Argent’s distinctive keyboards. In my youth I could never understand why they didn’t seem the make the lists of the great bands from the 1960s. Nor have they spawned the revival of interest we’ve seen accorded to other historic bands since then, i.e. in terms of biographies, documentaries or tribute albums. Only Seattle’s indie Popllama label mustered up their roster of bands to celebrate The World of the Zombies in 1994, featuring the Posies, the Young Fresh Fellows and the Fastbacks, among others.
Well, that seems to be changing. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced this fall that the band would be inducted in 2019 and regardless of what you think of that questionable institution, I welcome the attention to a band that has for too long been overlooked. To aid in that process this blog post will celebrate the great songs of the Zombies, as covered by more recent poprock artists. Funny thing though, as I set out to find said covers – from the obvious hits like “She’s Not There,” “Tell Her No,” and “Time of the Season,” to less obvious gems like “I Love You,” “Indication,” “The Way I Feel Inside,” “You Make Me Feel Good,” “Kind of Girl,” etc. – I discovered that the band’s material has not been covered that much. I was a bit shocked actually. So many truly great compositions overlooked while people put out yet another Beatles or Dylan cover. Hopefully this recent attention will right that wrong.
Time it was that the choice of an album’s single was both a serious artistic and financial decision. Putting out a single meant committing considerable resources to pressing them up and distributing them to radio stations, reviewers, and nightclubs. Today every cut on an album could theoretically be the single, depending on listener downloads and streams. But artists and record companies do still sometimes make a fuss about ‘the single’ as a way of drawing attention to a soon-to-be-released album. Or just as a way of maintaining interest in the product after its initial drop. For me, the single should be an album’s most potent hook vehicle, the song that will have listeners searching out the record for more. And it’s a way for me to highlight some great songs on the blog that just don’t fit anywhere else!
A new week, a brand new batch of just released tunes from some seriously melodic dudes: Sofa City Sweetheart and Wyatt Blair. When I heard what these guys had on offer, they went right to the front of the blogging queue. Why not start the week off right?
Musical chameleon Wyatt Blair has owned the sounds of so many different musical styles on his previous releases, though they’ve mostly focused on the 1980s. This time Blair steps back a few decades to nail the late 1960s California pop sound on his new record, Inspirational Strawberries. Things kick off with “It’s Yesterday,” a song filled with those classic fun 1960s sounds like harpsichord, bicycle bells and a killer organ, and then layered with some ace Cowsills vocals in the chorus. Next up is the obvious should-be hit single, “Gotta Get Away,” an adrenaline rush of Mamas and the Papas meets the Bryrds power sixties hooks. And Blair just keeps hitting the 1960s melodic marks after that, with some spot on, rocked up Hollies vocals on “Who’s to Blame,” a distinct Abbey Road vibe on “A New Tomorrow,” and some great rumbly lead guitar with Beach Boys vocal stylings on “Tenderly.”
Great music is breaking out all over this year and it’s a race to get them all in the blog before 2018 expires. Today’s crew has textured popcraft, a bit of blasty rock and roll, and even some dance grooves.
Just one listen to Legs & Luggage and there’s little doubt that Vegas with Randolph’s songwriters are conversant with the major melodic rock and roll motifs of the past few decades. They’re effortlessly combined on this album’s 13 winning tracks with a charm reminiscent of a more rough-hewn Fountains of Wayne. Opening track “You Could Say Yes” charges out of the gate with hooks that say radio-friendly hit single. Another single-ish release would be “The Girl Holding Out for Me” with its pure bliss hooky chorus. The album also sees the band vibing a range of influences, from the Plimsouls’ elan of “Jacob” to the chirpy Ben Kweller jaunt of “I Could be the One” to the Steve Miller touches on “The Weekend’s Coming.” And then there’s the wonderful FOW-meets-Partridge Family peppiness of “Women in Airports” and the veritable blueprint of perfect poprock song, “The Comeback Kid.” Forget buying singles, this one’s an album purchase.
Italy is producing an amazing bunch of melodic rockers of late (we featured stellar releases from 
A new record from Greg Pope is poprock money in the bank, he just doesn’t disappoint. I mean, one of his previous releases was aptly-named Popmonster, to which reviewers heartedly agreed – that gives you some idea what a prolific and reliable creative force he is. Now he’s back with A Few Seconds of Fame, which unfortunately could also double as a commentary on his undeservedly cool reception from top 40 radio. I don’t get it – to my ears, they’re all hits! Check the opening track “Forget About You” with its great driving tempo and solid yet subtlely hooky chorus, or the tightly delivered “Retread” – this is what radio-friendly singles used to sound like. But hey, I could just as easily recommend the wonderful 1970s ELO pop sound of “Hopes and Dreams and Fears” or the great late Beatles pop vibe on “Planet Earth” or the textured, layered sound of “Dreams About You,” particularly on the vocals. I guess nobody’s gonna make me a top 40 radio program director anytime soon but if they did …
Portland’s Hemmit have run the gamut of stadium-sounding rawk (ironically delivered, of course) to ‘punkish powerpop’ (in their words) to the electronic pop of their current release. The new EP, One Ultra, definitely channels some great 1980s synth pop influences, obvious on tracks like “Ultraviolet” and “Power” but subtlely lodged in others like “My Room” too. But consistent across their catalogue is the songwriting quality, evident on the obvious singles: the relentlessly driving “Friends” and the more melodic hooks of “Waves.” This is a band worth spending some time digging through various releases for a load of poprock gems.
The Appleton Post-Crescent described Car City as a “Fox Valley supergroup,” a reference to the fact that while all the musicians were long-standing members of the local live music scene they had really only recently come together to work on this project. Their experience clearly mattered because Car City, the album, sounds like the work of a cohesive band. The resulting sound is like Weezer on anti-depressants, a slightly dissonant, melody rich concoction that delivers on Jason Lemke’s great songs. It’s all there on the opening tracks, “Connecting the Dots” and “Like a Wave” with their earworm-worthy yet subtle melodic turns and twists. Then things get really interesting when “Hopeless” breaks out the Aimee Mann syth to good effect with some inspired full stops and background vocals, while “(Don’t) Give Up on Love” kicks off all Beach Boys vocal harmonizing before dusting off Steve Nieve’s organ. And the songs I haven’t mentioned? Also great. Frankly, I love all the tunes on this record. Car City deserves to be in your collection.
Time to get your jangle on – it’s jangle Thursday! Why Thursday? I don’t know. Maybe people just need a bit of sparkle to carry them through to the weekend. This installment takes a broad view of what jangles, not limiting the pool to just the Rickenbacker electric 12 string crew (not that there’s anything wrong with them …).
One way to get caught up on the amazing onslaught of music coming out is to let someone else do the sorting. Compilation records emerged almost simultaneously with advent of the long playing ‘LP’ in the 1950s, offering music consumers a load of hits or exposure to new artists at bargain prices. Of course, groove-cramming 20 artists on a single album did come at a cost – these were not ‘high fidelity’ releases! But I certainly recall hearing a lot of acts via such releases that I might not have discovered. Today digital compilation albums don’t suffer poor sound quality and once again serve to introduce audiences to broad genres of music – and power pop and poprock are no exceptions. While every track may not be winner on your garden variety compilation album, our three examples come pretty close!
Wayne Lundquist Ford is the ‘Ice Cream Man,’ a UK expat living in Sweden and producing a regular radio show that combines sixties retro classics with new material that runs the full gamut of power pop and then some. Ford’s particular blend combines garage rock with some surf rumble and straight up power pop. Songs We Learned in Sundae School is a monster collection of 163 tunes, all available for free download from the Futureman 
Reverse Play: C86 Rediscovered sees a variety of bands reinterpret the New Music Express cassette of indie pop tunes from 1986 that featured Primal Scream, The Primitives and The Pastels, among others. Some tracks have a decidedly shoegaze gloss to them while others sound like more polished or alternate takes of the originals. On the whole, it’s a pretty solid tribute/homage to the original record. But, if I have to choose, the standout tracks for me would be “Emma’s House,” from the incomparable The Catherines, the janglicious “Kill, Kill, Kill” by The Death of Pop, and Ed Ling’s beautiful acoustic rendition of “Velocity Girl.”
David Bash is a power pop institution, hosting live showcases of new talent in countless cities on two continents – every year! His insatiable appetite for hooks and keen ear for up and coming talent is apparent on his most recent multi-CD compilation, International Pop Overthrow 21. This collection features power pop defined in the most broad and inclusive terms (as it should be). Of the 69 featured songs, we’ve also highlighted 8 on Poprock Record, so clearly I’ve missed a lot of good stuff! As there’s too much here to review in detail, I’ll just whet your appetite with a few standout tracks, IMHO.
Poprock Record 