Tag Archives: Ruen Brothers

Poprock Record’s 25 must-have LPs for 2021

08 Saturday Jan 2022

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In our social media-saturated universe it seems that your 15 minutes of fame has been reduced to just 15 seconds. Who going to give up the time to listen to a whole album, let alone gaze longingly at the cover (like we used to do) while it plays? That means today’s albums have really got to have something special going on, like great tunes, engaging styles, and hooks that seem to improve with repeated listenings. Those are the standards we applied to the 2021 album releases we encountered this past year, resulting in a list of 25 must-have LPs we think you should get to know. But wait, that’s not all. We’ve also helpfully culled the racks for top EPs, covers albums, and long lost albums that finally saw the light of day in 2021. Forget the Columbia House Record Club, we’ve got all the long-players you need and then some. Hyperlinks take you to the original review.

So let’s get the show rolling with Poprock Record’s 25 must-have LPs for 2021:

1. James Henry Pluck
2. Brent Seavers BS Stands For
3. The Boys with The Perpetual Nervousness Songs from Another Life
4. Lane Steinberg The Invisible Monster
5. Ruen Brothers Ultramodern
6. Aaron Lee Tasjan Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!
7. Greg Townson Off and Running
8. Rich Arithmetic Shiftingears
9. Richie Mayer The Inn of Temporary Happiness
10. Drew Beskin Problematic for the People
11. Rob Ellis Orrall 467 Surf and Gun Club
12. Nicholas Altobelli Technicolor Hearts
13. The Friends of Cesar Romero War Party Favors
14. Steve Robinson Swallowing the Sun
15. The Brothers Steve Dose
16. Lolas All Rise
17. Lo Talker A Comedy of Errors
18. The Armoires Incognito
19. Tommy Ray! Handful of Hits
20. Chris Church Game Dirt
21. Matthew Milia Keego Harbor
22. Henry Chadwick We All Start Again
23. Rich Mattson and the Northstars Skylights
24. Ken Sharp Miniatures
25. Fishboy Waitsgiving

Putting James Henry as my number 1 album choice for 2021 might surprise a few blog watchers but frankly I don’t know why Pluck isn’t topping all the indie charts. Maybe it’s the subdued cover art or perhaps the album just falls between the genre cracks, I don’t know. But if you love those highly listenable 1980s Squeeze or Crowded House albums, this guy is for you. Each song should be stamped ‘earworm warning’ as a positive public health measure. Take it from me, Pluck is a relentless hook machine. 5 stars for sure. Other choices – Brent Seavers, The Brothers Steve, Lolas, Chris Church – are perhaps more predictable. Hey, they’ve delivered before and here they deliver again. Genre-wise, Lane Steinberg and Fishboy undoubtedly raise boundary issues but damn they are fine albums with subtly hooky tunes. And the rest? Well they’re all defined by content that is mucho killer, nada filler.

Next up, Poprock Record’s top five EPs for 2021:

1. Daryl Bean Mr. Strangelove
2. The Blendours Go On Vacation
3. BPM Collective Catastrophe Girl
4. The Cudas Alien Vacation
5. Rumble Strip Let’s Roll

Can’t spare the time for a full album experience? These extended play releases will meet your need for more than a single but not quite a long-player. But fair warning, these concentrated blasts of melodic goodness may leave you wanting for more. They’re that good.

Then, there’s Poprock Record’s top five covers albums for 2021:

1. Richard Turgeon 10 Covers Volume Two
2. Mike Browning Class Act
3. The Speedways Borrowed and Blue
4. The Unswept Power Pop for all the People
5. Spygenius Blow Their Covers

The pandemic moved just about everyone to put out an album of covers. But they’re actually pretty hard to nail, ranging in quality from elevated karoke to the unrecognizable. The trick is to rework the unique creative spark in the song, making it both recognizable and different at the same time. Turgeon’s a master of song reinvention, taking up tunes others wouldn’t dare to try (from the likes of The Monkees, The Mamas and Papas, and the Bryds, among others) and succeeding. Browning applies his own distinctive poprock chops to material from the sixties to the eighties that lets you fall for the classics all over again. Ditto 3, 4, and 5 – they love the songs and it shows.

And finally, Poprock Record’s 5 best long lost albums of 2021:

1. Sorrows Love Too Late … the real album
2. Steve Rosenbaum Have a Cool Summer
3. Bruce Moody Forever Fresh!
4. Doublepluspop Too Loud, Too Fast, Too Much
5. Underwater Sunshine Suckertree

The idea that a band could put all the work into writing, playing and recording an album and then not have it released almost seems like a crime in my book. Numbers 4 and 5 had their work ‘misplaced,’ only to accidently resurface recently and get released. Numbers 2 and 3 were indie artists whose various DIY and professional recordings never got gathered together for a proper release, until the rise of recent niche music markets made it viable. And number 1 is a remarkable story of a band that wouldn’t let their record company/producer’s mangled version of their album stand. So instead they rerecorded it, this time getting it right. That the Sorrows could make their rerecording of Love Too Late sound so 1981 is a testament to their talent and sheer doggedness.

Ok, one last category, Poprock Record’s best ‘best of’ album of 2021:

Dropkick The Best of Dropkick

Sometimes greatest hits collections really hit the mark. The Best of Dropkick is one of them. It’s a comprehensive overview of this great band’s career, packaged with attractive artwork, and at a very nice price.

Well we stretched the 25 album limit but it really was the only way to be fair to all these super LPs and EPs. I think this post demonstrates that while classic era of the album may be over, there’s still lots of tremendous long-playing records out there. If you love them, support them, whether its live or Memorex.

Lego records graphic courtesy art/design student _Regn.

Poprock Record’s should-be hit singles of 2021

03 Monday Jan 2022

Posted by in Poprock Themepark

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Welcome to our sixth annual collection of should-be hit singles gathered from the artists, albums and tunes featured on Poprock Record in the previous year. You’d think after five tries I would have come up with some kind of rock solid science to make these choices. But, no. Still winging it, going with whatever takes my fancy. I mean, I think you’ll see a pattern: catchy guitar hooks, soaring melodies, earwormy compositions, all accomplished in three minutes or less usually. Putting this list together was particularly challenging this year – positively spoilt for choices! My initial list of possible songs had over 200 selections. The hyperlinks below will take you to the original post about each artist as they first appeared on the blog.

So let’s get to it, Poprock Record’s top 50 should-be hit singles for 2021:

1. The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness “I Don’t Mind”
2. White Fang “Never Give Up”
3. The Vapour Trails “That’ll Do It”
4. James Holt “Mystery Girl”
5. Brent Seavers “More Than A Friend”
6. Timmy Sean “The College Year”
7. Aaron Lee Tasjan “Another Lonely Day”
8. Ruen Brothers “Cookies and Cream”
9. The Martial Arts “Bethany”
10. Daisy House “Last Wave Home”
11. The Coral “Vacancy”
12. Robert Ellis Orrall “Sunshine”
13. Deadlights “Breaking Down”
14. Love, Burns “Wired Eyes”
15. The Blendours “Tell Me The Truth”
16. Daryl Bean “Keeping Me Alive”
17. Stoeckel & Pena “Why”
18. Richard X. Heyman “Ransom”
19. Automatics “Black Velvet Elvis”
20. John Myrtle “How Can You Tell If You Love Her”
21. The Red Locusts “Another Bad Day For Cupid”
22. James Henry “So Many Times Before”
23. Lane Steinberg “The Invisible Monster”
24. Geoff Palmer “The Apartment Song”
25. Mike Browning “The Little Black Egg”
26. The Eisenhowers “Suffer”
27. The Jack Cades “What Am I Going To Do?”
28. Friends of Cesar Romero “Thinkin’ About Leavin’”
29. The Kickstand Band “Hey Julianne”
30. Pseudonym “Before the Monsters Came”
31. David Brookings “Mania At The Talent Show”
32. Lolas “Pain In My Heart”
33. Tommy Scifres “Thought You Knew”
34. Vanilla “I Shall Be Re-Released”
35. Hyness “Cruelty”
36. Tim Jackson “How Do You Mend A Broken Heart”
37. Caddy “Cost of Love”
38. Chris Church “Know”
39. Tim Izzard “Breaking Me Down”
40. BPM Collective “Catastrophe Girl”
41. Benny Hayes “Don’t Make Me Go”
42. Steve Robinson “Mr Empty Head”
43. The Poppermost “Laziest Fella In The Realm”
44. Liz Phair “Hey Lou”
45. Juliana Hatfield “Gorgon”
46. Robert Sherwood “Blue All Over”
47. Kurt Hagardorn “You Are My Girl”
48. Richard Turgeon “Goodbye to Summer”
49. Ed Woltil “Paper Boat”
50. The Amplifier Heads “The House of Young Dolls”

This year’s list privileges strong, strong hooks. I’m talking the jangleliscious guitar work from the ever reliable Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness on “I Don’t Mind,” the relentless driving guitar riffs animating White Fang’s “Never Give Up,” or the delicious 1960s roll out kicking off The Vapour Trails’ “That’ll Do It.” Or the pumping, plinky piano and organ cocktail that undergirds James Holt’s killer single “Mystery Girl.” Then there’s the more traditional poprock Brent Seavers, springing the earworm in the chorus of “More Than a Friend.” Still, there’s room for variety on this list, from the tender acoustic Aaron Lee Tasjan ballad “Another Lonely Day,” to the Beach Boys homage in Daisy House’s “Last Wave Home,” to a folk rock duet from Steve Stoeckel and Irene Pena on “Why,” to the striking sonic heartbreak embodied in Richard X. Heyman’s touching “Ransom.”

Truly, this list is just a bit a fun, one more chance for me to shine a light on the artists whose work had me hitting replay in 2021. But I’m sure you might make different choices. Feel free to tell me all about them! Either way, don’t forget to find some way – buying music, attending live shows (when it’s safe!), or taking up those opportunities to interact with them online – to support their bottom line. They may not only be in it for the money, but money does allow them to stay in it.

Star power: Aimee Mann, Ruen Brothers, and They Might Be Giants

07 Tuesday Dec 2021

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Time to turn up the wattage on the choice of featured artists for this post. I mean, don’t get me wrong, everybody I put up on this blog is a star to me. But some acts don’t really need much push from Poprock Record to sell records. You know what? Who cares. I still want to rave about their fabulous new releases and I’m gonna do it now.

Aimee Mann is the Joni Mitchell of her generation. Her ear for melody, her unique vocal phrasing, her restless pursuit of new musical challenges, they all exude that Joni brand of creativity. At the same time Mann embraces Mitchell’s intellectual seriousness. Just one listen to Queens of the Summer Hotel and you know you’re at the grown-up table. Others have explored the subject matter of the album in some detail so I won’t repeat that here. Suffice to say for our purposes, the tunes here are lush and memorable. There’s an acoustic bent to the instrumentation, Mann’s distinctive electric keyboard set aside for this outing. The style is sometimes somewhere between Costello’s Brodsky Quartet and his work with Bacharach, except when it’s pure Mann. Listeners looking for a hit of the latter classic sound, go directly to “Burn It Out.” She has a very specific and familiar way of bending a hook, usually occurring two thirds of the way through a sentence. But the rest of Queens of the Summer Hotel is both familiar and yet new territory. Opening cut “You Fall” has the delicate introspection of Joe Jackson in strong piano mode. “Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath,” “At the Frick Museum” and “You Could Have Been a Roosevelt” all vibe a musicals feel (as in Broadway), minus the dance numbers. I love the swing on “Give Me Fifteen,” the wistful melancholia to “Suicide is Murder,” and the subtle hook anchoring “I See You.”  Ultimately, this is an album that pays repeated listening. Queens of the Summer Hotel confirms Mann as one of America’s premier troubadours, delivering an album that defies genre, time and any sense of commercial constraint. And it’s a damn good listen.

Burn It Out

With Ultramodern the Ruen Brothers take their distinctive postmodern pastiche of classic 1960s Americana with a contemporary twist in some decidedly new directions. First there’s something old. The album does gather together some of the previous year’s stand-alone singles, radio-friendly should-be hits like the broody Blue Velvet pop of “Saving Me, Saving You” and the infectious earworm “A Million Things.” Then there’s the familiar ‘git along little doggie’ western sound the boys do so well on tracks like “The Storm in You” and “Topanga Canyon.” Things go in a more contemporary pop direction on songs like “San Diego Nights” and the explosive dance number “Takin’ It Easy.” Other tracks max out a rollicking sense of fun, with “Up in California” a bouncy ditty with a surprising pedal steel guitar solo while “Flying Cars” sounds very early 1980s new wave. And no Ruen Brothers release would be complete with some dark, introspective testaments to loneliness. Fittingly, “Alone” has an aching cinematic quality in its spare delivery. Or check out how the demo version of “Takin’ It Easy” is like a completely different song, its formerly frantic commercial delivery transformed into a haunting acoustic number. If Ultramodern is the future of music I say, bring on tomorrow!

Takin’ It Easy
Flying Cars

They Might Be Giants are a seemingly unstoppable force. Year after year they just keep putting out great material, with no appreciable decline in quality or productivity. Book is album number 23 and it represents no revolutionary change for the band. It’s just more of that heart-lifting, ‘life as a mad montage of silliness and sadness’ kind of goodness. It’s all there on selections like “Moonbeam Rays,” pleasant hooky numbers that instantly put a smile on your face. But what sounds simple can obscure some serious complexity, like the melodic and rhythmic development of the earwormy “Brontosaurus.” TMBG also always curate great instrumental sounds on their records. Exhibit A, some recognizably early EC Steve Nieve organ fills add value to the poppy delight of “Lord Snowdon.” Clever wordplay is another hallmark of TMBG songs, in evidence on the “Anna Ng”-ish “I Can’t Remember the Dream.” “I Lost Thursday” was a pre-release single and it has the obvious mark of a should-be radio hit (in my poprock alternative universe, at least). And check out the cocktail jazz laminating “Super Cool.” It certainly is. The verdict on Book is simple, another great TMBG record. Albums for these guys are more like another episode of your favourite show that you can’t wait to see and see again.

Brontosaurus
I Can’t Remember the Dream

They are the stars of poprock indie-verse and just as reliable as those lights in the night sky. You won’t go far wrong with any of these shiny things.

Holiday hit parade

17 Thursday Dec 2020

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Under normal circumstances we’d be reeling from the nearly toxic levels of holiday music saturation going on. Every shop, office or mall would be wall-to-wall Santa tunes, with a few mentions of that Jesus guy for good measure. And here I’d come along making the case for even more eggnog-splattered tune-age but with a significantly higher quotient of hooks. But not this year. Lockdown has put the holiday music hostage-taking on hold, at least somewhat. So I expect even greater tidings of joy to accompany my annual holiday hit parade offerings! Forget tinsel, let’s get a little reverb on that tree.

Kicking off our seasonal singles is fab contribution from Lisa Mychols. Last year Williamsport Grade 8 math teacher and aspiring songwriter Brian Fagnano wrote me late in the season to alert me to this great tune he’d written and convinced Mychols to record (sometimes cold-calling actually works!) and the result, “Ringing Bells on Christmas Day,” is fantastic, an instant classic! His note came too late to include the song in last year’s holiday post but I’ve kept it aside to feature this year. The track has a great Spector-ish quality to it, particularly in the song structure, with an updated, chiming indie-charm production-wise. This one’s going into an eggnog-with-rum level of rotation.

Another last-year Christmas song contribution came from the uber talented Brothers Steve. In addition to releasing a highly celebrated debut album (#1, reviewed here) the boys managed to get out a double-A-sided seasonal single. Last year’s post had one of the songs and this year I’m featuring the other, “I Love the Christmastime.” It’s got an early period Squeeze-like appeal, so 1980, in the best sort of way. The song also appears on the Big Stir Singles: The Yultide Wave with a load of other great tunes and artists (check out the whole package here). Another reliable band of hooky holiday music providers is Vista Blue with a whole album of festive tunes and one-off singles. But this year they blew the doors off on the doing-the-holiday-music thing with their Ralphie’s Red Ryders project and its accompanying album You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out. What a wonderful tribute to everyone’s fave anxiety-fueled holiday movie classic, A Christmas Story. And the songs are great too! I included “I’m Gonna Get an A+ on My Theme” because it’s my fave at this particular moment – that could (will) change. Growing up Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Paper” was a holiday 45 must play. Roy’s gone but a bit of him lives on in a raft of current releases from the Ruen Brothers, like their brand new holiday song, “This Wholesome Christmas Eve.” The boys nail the guitar ambience and songwriting style of 1962 while the vocals really are heavenly.

Ruen Brothers – This Wholesome Christmas Eve

The holidays offer performers an immense catalogue of now-classic material to cover in their bid to get a piece of that seasonal download/streaming action. But not all remakes are made equally. Nick Lowe is ‘old reliable’ in his ability to cover a tune and practically reinvent it. His collection of seasonal songs, Quality Street, as aptly named, and not in the cheap chocolates sort of way. This year he dropped two more holiday songs on us, one a cover of “Let It Snow.” With the able backing of his regulars Los Straightjackets, Nick largely lets the song’s hooky melody do all the work and the result are candy cane good. Indie darlings Peggy Sue strike a similar guitar pose with their cover of the venerable “White Christmas,” with just a shiver of their distinctive other-worldly Blue Velvet-style on the vocals. Power pop master Greg Pope gets right to work cranking the guitar all over “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” shifting from reverby lead to power chords with solid melodic effect. A less obvious pairing sees melodic noise-ster Velco Mary add some swing to the otherwise rather more typically morose “Silent Night.” But, hey, it works, giving the song some as-yet undiscovered pep.

Velcro Mary – Silent Night

Ok, back to new holiday songs. Dolour has definitely been good this year, releasing copious amounts of great material, both albums and singles. No coal for these guys. But they have more to give! Like “All Winter Long,” a contribution to the season with a nice McCartney “Wonderful Christmastime” ambience. Nick Piunti and the Complicated Men’s “Christmas Morning” is a more upbeat take on festive music, with both their signature jangle and Bryan Adams-meets-Elvis Costello vocals in attendance. Now here’s a timely seasonal tune, in more ways than one: The Jac (featuring the Christmas crew)’s “I Won’t Be Leaving Home for Christmas.” I mean, no metaphor here. We’re locked down or should be, for everyone’s sakes. Still, Jangle band and The Jac main man Joe Algeri manages to make it sound light and uplifting, with a sing-along feel and great harmonies. Now slipping back a few years, here’s a winning Christmas selection from Trolley’s Star of Wonder album, “Christmas in the Marketplace.” The guitar riffing alone here makes this song sparkle.

We wrap up this installment of our holiday hit parade by coming full circle, back to Lisa Mychols, this time working with Super 8. The duo wowed listeners with the obvious musical chemistry all over their self-titled debut effort this past summer, one that managed to effectively vibe sun, sand and a bit of surf. Now they take aim at winter with “Red Bird,” and the track is more proof that what they’ve got going is no fluke. The song is easy-going and breezy like an afternoon skate on an outdoor rink.

Merry happy to you this season dear readers, wherever you are and whatever you believe. I hope your holidays are filled with hooks that get cranked to 11.

Photo credit: Larry Gordon.