Powerpopaholic turned me on to Porter Block’s latest album Hard to See Beautiful, and particularly the wonderfully lush single, “Long Gone.” So I decided to take a stroll down Porter Block lane. Wow, what a catalogue! Over six albums and one EP Porter Block have produced a polished, subtlely hooky, sometimes amusing body of work. Mostly the work of duo, Peter Block and Caleb Sherman, the band defies easy categorization or comparison. Early 1980s melodic poprock like Marshall Crenshaw maybe, or amongst contemporaries perhaps Pete Yorn. One thing I really like about the band is their unabashedly commercial bent, commercial in the sense of polished and pristine in performance and musical adornments. Again, in the early 1980s this was not exceptional as a host of great songwriters and poprock bands were keen to seduce audiences with every slick sound they could (think Split Enz, the J. Geils Band, the Cars, etc.). What set them apart from more vacuous and contrived commercial output were the songs and the heart. Porter Block are a lovely return to these values.Wonder About MeSolitary HotelDie a Little Every DayLong Gone
I’ll admit, my first pass through the catalogue was selective, just four songs: “Wonder About Me” from their 2007 debut Suburban Sprawl, “Solitary Hotel” from the 2007 EP of the same name, “Die a Little Every Day” from 2010’s Peter Block, and “Long Gone” from this year’s Hard to See Beautiful. At first listen, I thought they were nice, bordering on pretty good. But after a week on replay their subtle hooks had gotten under my skin – pretty good became pretty great. So I went back for more. There’s too much to share here but there are a few songs you’ve just got to hear, like the hilarious “Lars,” the folk/country “Blackberry Girl,” two stellar vocal performances from Gowanis Yatch Club, and the John Waite “Missing You” period sound of “True Enough” and “Second Wind.”LarsBlackberry GirlMorning Finds YouMoving Around the SunTrue EnoughSecond Wind
Porter Block leave a light footprint on the internet, though they do have a Facebook page. Such melodic talent really deserves closer scrutiny. You can watch a short video about the making of their latest record here, featuring producer and poprock wunderkind Mike Viola.
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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.
When I first heard “Baby Ran” from their 1986 album 5440 (aka the green album) I was hooked. There was something so simple and catchy about the chorus, I couldn’t get it out of my head. Over the years, I kept buying their albums and CDs but reviewing them now I’m surprised how much of their material has always been folky and acoustic as well as jangly alt rock. The contrast is brought together on their latest release, La Difference, subtitled A History Unplugged. Some might complain that an ‘unplugged’ album is the last refuge of the musical scoundrel, where artists go when they have run out of ideas. But this effort really is a creative reinvention of the band’s singles catalogue. The most stark example is probably “Baby Ran,” which shifts from rock to country in this iteration without losing any of its hooky charm. Both new and old version appear below for easy comparison. The whole record is strong but for me the highlights include “One Day in your Life,” “I Go Blind,” and “Casual Viewin’.”
Sometime between 2011 and 2015 I realized I loved Teenage Fanclub. There was something dreamy about their melodies, their Byrdsian retro charm, the general feel-good aura that radiated from their music. Songs from Northern Britain, Manmade, Howdy! – with so many amazing albums no wonder Kurt Cobain called them his favourite band. But just as I grasped their poprock brilliance, the albums dried up, with 2010’s Shadows the seeming end of the line. Then last fall the band’s Facebook page announced they were working on new material and lo and behold the new record is almost here, literally entitled Here, and due out at the beginning of September. In the meantime, check out their fabulous new single, “I’m in Love.” The song is so in the Teenage Fanclub groove, it’s like they never left.
The music biz is an increasingly DIY affair, with everyone doing the McCartney I thing, i.e. writing, playing and producing everything or nearly everything on their records. Of course, today’s technology allows artists without a Beatlesque past to make some pretty sweet recordings. Case in point: Red Cabin, the tidy and picturesque project of Long Island, New York’s Jonathan Foster. Red Cabin ranges from the amplified home recording sound of his first album, Right This Way, and EP Wander in 2014, to the more complex and professional-sounding Camp Fire and White Morning, both released simultaneously in 2016. In the middle are some key transition singles, namely “The Pull” and “Patterns.” Linking all the changes is a keen attention to unusual vocal arrangements, amid fairly rapid shifts in musical attack – singular acoustic guitars suddenly flooded by electric instruments, or a full on band drops out to reveal just a guitar or keyboard part.
But they did not prepare me the double blast of Red Cabin albums early in 2016. Both Camp Fire and White Morning are stellar efforts. Camp Fire runs a gamut of styles, with electronic keyboards, acoustic and electric guitars, and tightly arranged vocals. “The Darkest Relief” reminds me a bit of Todd Rungdren, “I Want To” has a great soaring chorus melody line, “Secret Stories” exudes a lovely wistful quality with its acoustic guitar and arranged vocals, while “I Can’t Wait” has a more conventional poprock feel.
White Morning has the ambiance of a concept album, right down to the cover art. “Stuck” sounds a bit Weezer at times (in a good way), with a Beatles melody wash over the vocals, “All the Years” is a bit more indie poprock with great keyboards, guitar, and stronger, edgier vocals than Red Cabin typical, and “Juliet” has a nice swing with vocals that remind me of Tally Hall. Also, don’t miss Foster’s previous band, Snowday, whose 2013 single “Prickerbush” is a catchy number, again vibing on Weezer just a little.
Twins were a first for me. Their publicist sent me a blurb and link to their latest release in advance of its drop date, asking me to have a listen. I’m glad I did. Hailing from the bustling burb of Waterloo Iowa, Twins have a great pockrock feel, channeling a super new wave vibe on their first album, 2014’s Tomboys on Parade, particularly on “Tomboy.” By 2016 their Kiss of Life EP had a sweet melodic 1960s pop single in “This Time.” But their new album Square America takes all these various influences and kicks it up a notch on such great songs as “Breakin’ Up” and “Take That Gurl.”
A casual and inattentive listen might have you thinking that Chris Staples is just another LoFi drifter, with a few more hooks to offer. But there is some serious genius going on in his multiple releases over the past decade. Staples spent a number of years rocking out with bands like TwoThirtyEight and Grand Canyon before embarking on his present, more mellow solo career. What I love about Staples’ work is the casual poetry of his arrangements. His songs are deceptively simple in conception and execution.
“Relatively Permanent” from his most recent Golden Age combines a distinctive electric guitar line, acoustic guitar, haunting background vocals, and Staples own dry folky vocal delivery. “Cindy, Diana, Janet and Wanda” from the 2015 EP Cheap Shades demonstrates Staples’ talent for imaginative lyrics that gel with his music in a way that appears completely free of artifice. The guitar lick opening is so casually addictive, the distant harmonica so evocative, that when the lyrics come in they are surprisingly and similarly melodic. The lyrics really are brilliant for their ordinary complexity: “How could I forget Diana, she moved here from Gary, Indiana” or “She left me for a married professor, extra credit for letting him undress her.” “Dark Side of the Moon” from 2014’s American Soft has a lovely swinging acoustic guitar base and a sweet love sentiment. “Cincinnatti” from his 2011 EP Faces sees Staples shifting from a great swinging electric guitar line to lyrics that match the swing. And there is much more discover this Pensacola, Florida native on sites like Bandcamp.
Michael Goodman, who goes by just Goodman on his recordings, is one of those amazingly talented young men. Bandcamp features some pretty impressive and catchy demos from the 13-year-old version of Goodman, talent that only blossomed in later years. Things really start to come together on Goodman’s 2012’s release, What We Want, with the infectious single “Night Person” and the great title track. 2014’s Isn’t it Sad has many highlights but “Blue Eyed Girl” stands out for its killer chorus. Since then there has been a succession of quality singles like 2015’s “Telegram Girl” and 2016’s “Shallow.” Goodman has all the poprock chops, a solid foundation in 1950s and 1960s song structures, but funneled through late twentieth century sensibility.
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