Two great talents have gotten back together, tripping the tunes fantastic one more time. This time out on their new LP Unfinished Monkee Business Trip and Lisa seem to be lingering in the early 1970s, offering us an immediately recognizable sonic palette. “Time Out” opens the show with a carnivalesque bit of show-starting aplomb. It’s a bit of this and a bit of that, signalling the variety to come. So get ready for quite a ride. One minute we’re all motor city hip-shaking on “Love Connection,” the next we’re breezing through California to a Carpenters-like beach destination with “California Road Trip.” The 1970s flavours keep on coming with the Jackson 5 keyboard-pumping that drives “Pop Radio CD” while a soft rock folkie vibe colours in the lines on “Falling for You.” Beyond the polyester suits and sun-dappled photo shoots, songs like “These Are the Days” and “Whenever You’re Gone” conjure comparisons to Neil Sedaka and the 5th Dimension. 1970s vocal group stylings also get a look in on “Honolulu” and “Eskimos,” though in very different ways. “House on the Hill” wraps things up in a slightly different Dylanesque register. The album is like a time trip to a warm and fuzzy early 1970s, without all the Watergate and Vietnam spoiling all the fun.
Nowhere does Unfinished Monkee Business actually promise to wrap things up on this duo’s collaboration. And that’s good, because when Super 8 and Lisa Mychols get together groovy things have a habit of happening. Get your copy of their further adventures direct from the source at bandcamp.
Cold winter temperatures up here in the Great White North have my feet tapping for all the wrong reasons. Time to heat things up with singles so sizzling they’ll scorch the turntable.
There’s something very 1980s space-age soundtrack to the vibe on Ricky Rochelle’s new single “Imagine Being Eric.” It’s there in the background keyboard runs and arrangement of the vocals. Very 1983. Then we have Retro Metro music man Super 8, back with jangle chanteuse Lisa Mychols on a new song. “Pop Radio” celebrates the joy of finding a great song over the airwaves. Quaint though the sentiment may be, the track hits all the modern marks for sixties timelessness. Putting power pop maestro Kurt Baker together with Wyatt Funderburk was always going to make for ear-catching experience. Baker’s new release “Warm in the Winter” is hooks at every turn, all sleek and shiny pop laced with plenty of rock edge. And on point for this theme post. Moving into more dream pop territory Shapes Like People offer up a mellow bit of jangle that practically flows like water on “Ambition is Your Friend.” Just one of a number of atmospheric cuts from their new LP Ticking Haze. Belgium’s CMON CMON excel at a kind of wall of sound aural pop assault. “Turn Off the Lights” balances a solid rocking backing with a smooth vocal and pop melody.
London’s The Tubs come on like some surging poprock outfit on “Freak Mode” but when the lead vocal kicks in such perceptions are quickly derailed, conjuring instead a more English rural folk aura. But the combination somehow still works in a beautifully creative tension. Ok this next band got to me at the name level. I’ve spent my life quipping ‘he’s dead Jim’ at all sorts of inappropriate moments. So running across Aberdeenian Scot rock combo He’s Dead Jim I knew I had to cover them. “Swim to Oblivion” is just one of 14 winning swinging rock tracks from their recent LP Head Like a Toyshop. These guys are very much alive – no red shirts here. Boston’s The Fatal Flaw deliver the goods again with their new single “Baby Tooth.” It’s got a hint of pop punk, in the vocal delivery particularly. But the chorus steps on the hooks for all they’re worth. Meanwhile in Philadelphia The Tisburys are priming their audience for an album release sometime in April. In the interim you can get the flavour of what is to comie with the propulsive, highly melodious “Forever.” Mike Browning pulls a rarity off oldies radio for full-on folk rock coverage, The Ragmuffins’ 1967 single “Four Days of Rain.” With vocal support from daughter Jillian, the duo recreate a decidedly Brydsian ambience.
The band Free Weed have produced what really should be the US public service theme song. “Government Employee” has mystery and cool New Order bass work and a freaky bit of psychedelic guitar work. Did I mention it’s cool? It really is. From the same record label, LA’s Gnar Tapes, The Memories lighten the mood with their chipper acoustic guitar strum and mellifluous single note keyboard work. The slightly sinister and otherworldly vocal offsets this lighthearted musical bed so effectively. Two decades on should-have-been power pop superstars The Mayflies USA are back with a brand new single and it is like they never left. “Calling the Bad Ones Home” expands the band’s sonic palate from Big Star to The Jayhawks and I’m liking it. If I can’t have a new album from Guster or Chris Collingwood then Gentle Hen will fit the bill. Actually let’s add them to that bill. Their new album is The Wrong Record and it’s all good but check out “It Only Takes a Couple Words” particularly. The vocal and guitar adornments sound so simple but they add incredible sonic depth to what is going on. Shifting to swinging London I like what The Open Flames are doing on their new song “Drop a Coin.” There is some very cool bass synth going on and a flurry of vocal ba ba ba ba ba’s adds charm to an already maximum charm ditty.
I’ve been wanting to write about the madly talented So Cow for ages. The band show so many stylistic faces to the world. Their latest single “Reputable Seer” seems like as good a place as to start. Check out the Beatles 64 guitar tone kicking things off before the sound moves in an Elephant 6 direction. Some very cool Apples in Stereo vibes happening here. Reliably melodic rocker Brad Marino has an album of rarities, remixed and unreleased stuff about to hit the e-shelves and from what is presently available online even attentive fans are going to find stuff they’ve never heard before. Like “Not Fooling Me” in my case. This is classic Marino hooky goodness, tied up with his oh so smooth vocals. Peter Green’s Soulbird project is like hitting the psychedelic mainline, with an extra pop punch. “Stay With Me Angel” has hooks working overtime but the vocal arrangement takes things to a new level. As if he’s not busy enough with his other bands Rural France and Teenage Tom Petties, now Tom Brown is fronting another nearly one-man band called Lone Striker. “Dunno” is a wonderfully languid bit of slow-groove pop, with what sounds like some sonorous horn work lifting the mood. Another exciting new release comes our way from guitar ambience expert Chris Church. “Sit Down” is dotted with sparkly guitars and a vocal that shifts from smoky smooth to urgently insistent.
Wrapping things on this shivery singles collection is a song so in keeping with our seasonal theme from everyone’s fave punk-pop productivity super-achievers Vista Blue. “I’m Going to be Warm This Winter” is pure adrenaline salted with plenty of pop hooks.
Brrr. It’s definitely a good day to stay inside, somewhere between the fire and the turntable.
Another year, another load of really good albums. Creativity was off the charts in 2024, in both senses unfortunately. But banish despair, here at Poprock Record we make up our own charts, shining light on a deserving collection of should-be stars. Here’s our list of 25 must-have albums from the past year and, trust me, you’ll find plenty of variety within our self-imposed parameters of poppy rock. You’ve got jangle (Ducks Ltd.), gender (Day Dreams) and heartbreak (Tamar Berk). There’s retro (Terry Anderson), metro (Super 8) and fun (Scoopski). We’ve got artists singing in Spanish (Star Trip) and wide variety of accents from the British Isles (the list would be too long). And so much more.
The envelope please, here are Poprock Record’s 25 must have LPs from 2024:
Day Ricardo’s Day Dreems project was groundbreaking in so many ways, lyrically touching on gender, the body, ADHD, oppressive nostalgia and more, while musically mashing up hints of Squeeze, Crowded House and the Beatles into their own distinctive voice. It’s a most worthy choice to sit at #1. But close behind Tamar Berk wowed us with yet another winning collection of introspective yet downright hooky numbers. Brent Seavers, now there’s a guy who knows how to pack an LP full of highly listenable tunes. I mean, he does it again and again. I could go on … and do in the original posts hyperlinked above.
The EP format continues to offer artists a creative outlet that falls somewhere between the noble single and a more herculean long-playing effort. True for some it may amount to little more than a glorified single with additional alternative versions, demos and live cuts (not that I’m complaining). But for others it’s a carefully curated musical statement in its own right. I think our cast of 6 must-have EPs from 2024 lean more in the latter direction:
I deliberately leave legacy artists – i.e. those that gained conventional chart success and still benefit from that or have a major label sponsor – off my yearly lists. They don’t really need any push from me. But I do love a lot of those acts and it is great to see them still putting out solid creative works. So here’s a legacy artist shout out to some notable releases in 2024:
I’m a non-recovering Beatlemaniac, it’s true. I’m always on the lookout for some fun and creative riffs on the Fabs. This year Nick Frater blew away the competition with the further development of his Rutles project, a riff on a riff on the Beatles. So meta! Thus our best riff on the Beatles this year is:
Last year I singled out The Flashcubes for their amazing Pop Masters album. It was one where they covered a host of new wave era classics with members of the original bands. This year their spin-off band The Half Cubes produced their own version of that project with equally impressive results. You see where this is going. This year’s special award of awesome poprock meritgoes to:
As I wrote in the original review, “Pop Treasures is a monster of a collection” that is ‘lovingly relentless’ in its coverage of 1970s and 1980s hit-makers and indie darlings. It’s a hits package worthy of K-Tel, and that is high praise coming from someone who lived through the seventies. So many great songs here, including our #1 most inventive cover for 2024 “Make You Cry.” Treat yourself, this is a guaranteed good time.
Album fans, the form is in safe hands if the releases from this past year are anything to go by. Sure the kids may not be into them the way their 1960s through 1990s peers were but they’ll have something to dip into when they get older.
The Beatles influence is like its own musical language, infusing a broad body of genres over the decades. All it takes is a particular guitar part, vocal harmony, or lyrical turn to evoke a distinct period of the band’s musical development. It’s impressive how people take those influences and make them their own in so many ways, despite differences in language and musical style. Today we feature acts with qualities that might be dubbed Beatlesque from around the world.
The most obvious triumph of Beatles influence is how it can transcend language. Beatles songs sung in other languages can retain the magic of the originals. Uruguay’s Los Shakers do a Spanish-language version of “Ticket to Ride” (retitled “Boleto para viajar”) that bristles with pure Merseybeat energy. They were the first among many sixties acts from Latin America covering the Beatles in English, Spanish and Portugese (see Blog de Rock en Mexico for many more). A more recent example is Argentina’s Los Ratones whose 2013 album Beatles En Espanol includes 14 early to mid-career moptop faves including a nicely restrained take on “I Feel Fine.” More recently UK retro power popper Super 8 offered up a version of “I Need You” in a language from the other side of the Pacific – Japanese.
Los Shakers “Boleto para viajar” (“Ticket to Ride”)
There are covers and then there are covers. Erkdon’t just cover “It Won’t Be Long” on their LP Erk Plays the Beatles they add a kind of crazed manic energy to it. At other points on the album they change things up completely, for instance, reinventing “Blackbird” as a piano tune. Or for something even more ‘out there’ there’s the laser focus of The Boobles. On their The Pink Album they manage to refocus every Beatles cover on the same particular part of female anatomy, for a good cause. “Milk” is definitely “Help” but with a new lyrical purpose, this time in aid of breast cancer research. Other bands strive to really sound like the Fabs but with their own material. For example A see The Poppermost on their recent Merseylicious “I Don’t Want To Know” single. The Dodos UKgo in a very different direction. The band is the creative brainchild of Tolly Gipson who uses AI like some kind of bionic mellotron to craft tunes that are spot-on sixties recreations, all the while producing an amazing parallel universe back-story for his would-be moptops. “Now You Don’t See” alleges to come from the band’s soundtrack to their film Danger! Stylistically it definitely falls into a Help! register, with a touch of The Hollies too.
Another kind of influence is a bit more distant from the originals, simply borrowing the broader musical milieu or sonic palate of the band for creative purposes. Adrian Gerard embodies this approach. His work screams Beatles but his songs are his own. I’m really digging his Sounds Like … Volume 2 album, particularly cuts like “Just Don’t Care” and “For You.” Korean group HOAwere working a soft rock seam until they released their I Don’t Know Why EP earlier this year and suddenly were reborn as a full-blown Mersybeat group. The four tracks subtly mine a Beatles ambience here and there but also harken back to Dutch groups like Sunday Sun, particularly on selections like “All My Days” and “Sunday Girl.” More recent singles like “Push Man” step on Fabs pedal a bit harder, conjuring “Taxman” like guitar hooks. Brazilian band Banda AL9 have material that riffs on the mellow side of the Beatles street, vibing numbers like “Do You Want to Know a Secret” and “If I Fell.” But “Eu Quero Navegar” from their 2019 EP Isso É AL9 dials down the Beatle-isms to let their own original pop tune shine on. By contrast, this past year’s stand-alone single “She Calls Me Love” / “Chama de Amor” is pretty earnestly going with the Mersey flow.
Banda AL9 “Eu Quero Navegar”
Great music can break through a host of barriers, be they language or culture or style. No tower of Babel aftermath is going to stop Beatlemaniacs making those links.
You’ve got to give the guy top marks for trying. After bolstering his reputation for quality jangle earlier this year with his fabulous summer release Retro Metro now Super 8 appears to want to be big in Japan. And why not? It worked pretty well for Cheap Trick. Super 8 Goes J-Pop is a tidy EP package of five songs, featuring covers of influential Japanese bands as well as a recent Super 8 single sung in Japanese.
Things kick off with the Super 8 original “Keep Doing It” from Metro Retro which sounds just as chipper and sunshine-y in Japanese as in English. But the bulk of the EP is focused on covers. The choice of Japanese band material dips into the 1970s and then skips ahead to new millennium. Happy End famously abandoned rock and roll’s then lingua franca English to sing in their native Japanese in the late 1960s, influencing a nation of bands to do the same. Their “Kaze Wo Atsumette” is a classic of the era, a deceptively simple-sounding (but in reality tightly-arranged) folk rock masterpiece in miniature. The exquisite organ work alone is worth the price of the single. When you compare their version to Super 8’s you can hear how he puts a bit more of an electric stamp on things while loosening the structure. Super 8 also includes an acoustic version of the song that is a spare folk treatment with a campfire intimacy. Then we shift to 2010 for a cover of the Tenniscoats single “Baibaba Bimba,” a song that stands a testament to extreme folk minimalism. Super 8 inserts an alluring sonic backdrop to the tune without altering its minimalist clarity and beauty. And then, just for fun, we get a Japanese-language version of The Beatles “I Need You.” This would have gone down a treat at the Budokan in July 1966 for sure.
Perhaps Super 8 Goes J-Pop will lead to a frenzied fan-base from the far east demanding tours and merch from our fave jangler. Whether that comes to pass or no, all I can say is that you don’t need to understand Japanese to dig what Super 8 is laying down here.
After 10 albums it might seem strange to re-introduce you to Super 8. But his new album is kind of a new start. Retro Metro gives you a kaleidoscope view of everything that is great about the Super 8’s supercharged take on the 1960s. So gather round errant flower children, folk rockers, sunshine pop lovers and Kinksian jangle fans, your pied piper is here with tunes to lead you astray and then some.
Following the funky keyboard-heavy instrumental opener “Retro Metro Theme” we get right down to what Super 8 does best with “Keep Doing It,” a chipper pop tune that manages to squeeze the sunshine out of the summer sky. You can practically feel the beach breeze coming off ‘feel good’ tracks like “Almost Anything” and “Mary Jane.” But the record has a harder edge too. Four songs included here are remnants of an aborted mystery-group side-project entitled The Plus 4 and they appear to have set the tone for the whole record. “You Look Right Through Me” rings out with jangle hooks that are unstoppable while the chorus is so Zombies it’ll make you swoon. Other former Plus 4 numbers like “Tell It Like It Is,” “Take It From Me” and “Every Word Is True” have a swinging Meet-the-Beatlesque charm, ornamented with some sweet sweet harmonica solos. But as we dig into the newer material here the star of this record might just be the Rickenbacker electric 12 string guitar. It makes everything sparkle. Check out its impact on “Lies,” which opens with a jauntiness reminiscent of the Fabs’ “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party.” Or see what it adds to the Stonesy “Just A Song,” the Ray Davies-ish “Another Me,” or Monkees-style “Just Me & You.”
So ask yourself, have you really met Super 8? Retro Metro is all the proof you need he is the grooviest undiscovered star you definitely need to become acquainted with. You can arrange your audio meet-up here.
Snow is so pretty … until it isn’t. That’s why we need music to soundtrack our travails here in the Great White North. Whether you are shoveling or just trudging through it you can make your snowy place experiences a montage of sorts with these fab selections.
Stepping on the dreamy pedal, Real Estate tease their upcoming album #6 entitled Daniel with the release of an ever-so-carefully crafted pop single. “Water Underground” has the cadence and pacing of work from bands like The Shins or Sitcom Neighbor. It will get in your head and stay there, but you won’t mind. Super 8 is busy putting together the pieces for his special project Super 8 Presents The Plus 4 but in the meantime he’s released another single. “Keep Doing It” sounds like this tribute-to-the-beat-group-sound has moved from 1965 into 1966. There’s a bit of flower power in the mix, adding to the distinctive jangle and a heavy dose of some groovy organ work. Irish psych rockers Spearsidereturn with another winning single, the moody, bass-heavy, yet still hooky “Passion Merchant.” There’s even a touch of Caribbean flavour to the instrumental bridges on my listening. On their latest LP The Flip SideMonogroove get into the 1960s right and proper with a few well-chosen covers and a vibe on the originals that is so in that decade’s pop sweet-spot. Right now “Let Me Know” is grabbing me with its jangly guitars and spot-on Beatles background vocals. Another teaser single comes our way from Flying Underground with the dissonantly wonderful “Mixtape.” This song rides a striking contrast between clean verses that shift down into darker yet still hooky choruses. More please.
Time to go all 1980s on you with a current artist that somehow conjures the atmosphere of that gel-drenched decade so effortlessly. Just listen to all the musical adornments on Jonny Couch’s “Sweet Charlene.” The guitar is almost southern fried rock-approved, the keyboards are so Hall and Oates, while the tune is 1980s melodic groovy. You can dip into his 2019 LP Mystery Man for more of the good same. Into these difficult times The Armoires offer us the refuge of “Musical and Animals,” sounding like a cross between the frosty folk stylings of Everything But the Girl and the sweet sentiments of The Happy Somethings. Just one of 20 fabulous cuts featured on their label Big Stir Records sampler The Cream Of 2023: Foam Your Consideration. Appearing to usher in a new era of folk rock The Sylvia Platters crank the jangle distortion on their new 45 “Kool Aid Blue” and the effect is most endearing. Somehow loud and dreamy at the same time. Another band preparing us for more are The Embryos. “Desiree” is the advance single from their new album Selling What You Want To Buy and once again they keep us guessing, striking a decidedly country Americana note on this release. Imagine the Eagles as an indie band and you’re in the ballpark. I stumbled across Desert Mambas as one of the bottom-of-the-page Bandcamp suggestions and immediately fell in love with the early 1960s camp tone on their “Notes from Chicago.” It’s a more stylized version of their usual low-key indie sound but no less fabulous for it.
Let me clear, Sad About Girls new 3 song EP Songs For My People is three songs strong, particularly the jangle-driven opener “You Are Here.” But I’m featuring their cover of the Beatles track “Baby’s In Black.” I mean, if you don’t want to pull focus from such great originals why do such a killer job on the cover? The jangly lead guitar work is Harrison-authentic but the twist is in the Tom Lucas’ superb vocal delivery, effectively adding a contemporary gloss to an otherwise classic-sounding rendition. Memphis quintet Your Academy follow up their debut LP riffing Big Star by cheekily titling their new release #2 Record. The two tracks currently playable sound like hits to me, especially the languid, somewhat loping “Just a Little Out of Tune.” Definitely a 1970s feel – a little bit Big Star, perhaps a whole lot more Wings. Shake Some dub themselves ‘Power Pop from Bordeaux, France’ but you could easily mistake them for a late 1970s CBGB’s act. “Not Even You” has a wonderfully muddy, almost live indie rock and roll sound that delivers a nice melodic hook. All the rock critics love The Lemon Twigs and what’s not to love? Their records are like lovingly syncretic syntheses of an amazing range of rock and roll motifs. The D’Addario brothers know the canons and how to selectively draw from them. Case in point, their most recent single “My Golden Years” combines the yearning vulnerability of 1970s singer-songwriters, with maybe a touch of Queen and 10cc thrown in here and there, buffeted by army of Beach Boys background vocals that seem to multiply as the song goes on. Breathtaking stuff indeed. From a more low-key direction, Sorry Monks focus our attention on guitars and compressed vocals on “Girlfriend.” It’s like they’ve taken the ambience from “I’m Only Sleeping” and channeled that into a whole new thing. And it works.
Indie super-group Orbis Max return with a new single “Here and Now” that sounds like it’s drawing from equal parts Dylan and 1970s Manfred Mann. It sounds vaguely familiar and somehow timeless at the same time with an attractive, sing-along-worthy chorus. Seems like The Deep Drags main man was hiding his rock and roll light under a bushel for most of his life but thankfully he’s recently put his recordings on display. There’s a 1960s garage fun element to his songs but also a considerable 1980s indie polish. “If You Want Me To” sounds pretty ready-for-rock-radio circa 1984 to me but I’m also partial to hooky jangle of “You Don’t Know Love.” Now grab onto something because the jangle intensity of The Jette Planes on their single “Tunnel” will have you involuntarily moving and grooving. The vibe in 1965 London nightclub, skinny ties not optional. Friends of Cesar Romero surprised us last year by releasing a full album instead of the usual litany of EPs. Queen Of All The Parliaments is solid collection of jangly garage-rock-stamped tunes but here we single out the relentlessly sibilant hooks of “Tomorrow’s Weather Girl.” This is movie-opener montage-worthy for sure. Now for something a bit different Austin Texas gives us The Infinites. There’s definitely something cinematic about their groove. “The Expats” is the advance single from their new album Archetypes and it strikes an ethereal, slightly ominous pose. You know something’s gonna happen to the protagonist here and it won’t be good. Stay tuned for the full album treatment to find out what.
We wrap things up on this first foray celebrating singles in 2024 with some heavy melody from one of my fave finds from this year past, Liquid Mike. “Mouse Trap” hits you hard with nineties grungy chords but never lets go of its melodic hook. That’s just one of 13 tunes to come on the soon-to-be-here Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot.
Who will triumph as the ‘theme from a snowy place’? As usual, you’ll decide. Hurry over to the artist websites and bandcamp pages to vote with your wallet.
The traditional rock and roll album ain’t dead, not by a long shot. Usurped for sure by new commercial formats and changing consumer listening patterns but the album – as a distinct collection of songs (sometimes forming a coherent whole) – remains the default mode of delivery for a wide swathe of guitar-based popular music. Proof? There was simply no shortage of fabulous, super-charged, pop-rocking long-players and extended plays to spend time with throughout 2023. From this embarrassment of musical riches we’ve whittled down a few different lists of LPs and EPs we feel rank as having ‘must have’ status. There’s something for every taste that falls somewhere across the broad, rather idiosyncratic category of ‘poprock’ we employ here. So dive in, see what you think, and do let us know about whatever egregious oversight you think we’ve undoubtedly committed. The hotlinks take you to the original reviews.
Cue drumroll – here we have it, Poprock Record’s 25 must-have LPs from 2023:
This year’s list tipped more toward some classic genre distinctions. The Decibels are beat group heaven for me and When the Red Lights Flash just proves their mastery of this form and seemingly bottomless creativity with it. By contrast, The McCharmlys conjure the ghost of 1950s west Texas rock and roll (even though they’re from California), effectively reinventing it for today. For a different slice, we’ve got the highly sophistico-pop of The Parlophonics. Such great songs, delivered so smoothly. And so on. Our list has got jangle (Buddie, Bory), new wave revival (The Blips, The Blusterfields), country tinges (The Tubs, Rachel Angel), and straight up melodic rock (Richard Turgeon, Dave Kuchler). Long may the LP reign in what’s left of the rock and roll universe.
But there’s more. The ongoing revival of the extended play record format has led to this list, Poprock Record’s must-have EPs from 2023:
The Strange Neighbors EP was hands down my favourite thing about 2023. It brought back a familiar teenage rush of excitement that used to accompany the discovery of something so cool and earworm addictive it just had to be played over and over. Also cool was Joe Dillilo’s oh-so smooth collection of songs, which saw him transitioning from behind the mixing board to the spotlight with ease. And what about Super 8’s alter ego project The Plus 4? An absolute jangle blast. EPs can be such a concentrated blast of melodic goodness, leaving you wanting more.
Before you go there’s one more album we’ve got to highlight. It’s a record so good we had to give it the special award of awesome poprock meritfor 2023:
As I wrote in the original review, Pop Masters gives you “12 new wave era should-have-been hits, stylishly re-energized” and “celebrates what might-have-been with selections from bands that should have broken big but didn’t.” But the band don’t just celebrate the great songs of bands like The Pezband, The Spongetones, The Paley Brothers and The Shoes, they share the spotlight with them in what amounts to a series of power pop band duets. Let’s face it, this project could have gone very wrong. But again, from the original review, the “results are a pumped up, adrenaline-fueled romp through a host of power pop classics … where every cut is a highlight …” Believe the hype. The Flashcubes are, indeed, pop[rock] masters.
Spend some time with these LPs and EPs and I think you’ll agree, melodic rock and roll is in good health if not wealth. But you can help change that for the price of triple shot latte from your favourite beverage store. Go on, skip the coffee queue and click the links to these artists.
Early in 2023 a curious new band hit the scene offering up a whole lot of 1960s beat-group shake and sizzle. The Plus 4 quickly issued 4 tunes, one a month, before disappearing just as mysteriously as they had arrived. But what a quartet of singles they left us! The tunes channeled a glammy Kinks/Beatles/Byrds melange (reviewed here) that definitely had me wanting more. Well, it would appear the wait is now over and the mystery of just who this band is can be solved.
Why am I not really surprised? Paul Ryan is a master of sixties stylings, deploying hints of all the great beat groups, right from the British invasion through their psychedelic reinventions and beyond to the sunshine pop that took them into the 1970s. His songs are littered with inventive reworkings of Kinks, Beatles, Beach Boys and Byrdsian motifs. But this Plus 4 project is something special. It’s like he’s put a particularly unique sixties filter on the stereo for these tunes. What I hear is a bit more stripped down affair, with greater prominence given to the jangly guitars, and a stronger to-the-front-of-the-mix on the vocals. Check out for yourself just what the differences amount to by hitting play on the just released The Plus 4 EP #1. You get – no surprise here – four songs. One track is a slightly revamped take on “Resolution (Happy New Year),” the project’s very first single that came out in early January. Glam Kinks was how I initially described it and I stand by that declaration. From there we segue into the new tunes, starting with the swinging Meet-the-Beatlesque “Take It From Me.” The guitar so nails the period. Dance-able? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. “Every Word is True” breaks out the harmonica to good effect. Then things wrap up with the janglelicious “Tell It Like It Is.” The EPs overall effect is like a fresh blast of Merseyfied poprock at its finest.
Given the prior releases and now these new tunes my guess is that this is only the start of a fab new year for us and The Plus 4. Mystery solving never sounded so good.
As a confirmed Beatlemaniac I would remiss if I didn’t have something to say about the just released Beatles ‘final’ single “Now and Then.” I have to be honest, hearing rough bootleg versions of the track over the years the song struck me as somewhat slight, akin to a host of deep-cut confessional love songs John typically interspersed amongst his early to mid 1970s solo albums. Thus it didn’t surprise me that Paul, George and Ringo passed on fixing it up for the Anthology series in favour of “Free As A Bird” and “Real Love.” But the new, just officially-released Paul and Ringo fixed-up version definitely elevates the track from its more mundane demo takes. John’s new and improved vocal obviously dominates the proceedings but Paul and Giles Martin have done an expert job adding all the expected late period Beatle-isms e.g. Abbey Road-era background vocals, tasteful strings, some pedal steel guitar, and a psychedelic turn to the tune’s arrangement (particularly the ending). And yet the song is not merely a retread of past accomplishments stylistically as it incorporates the more forlorn melodic twists John developed as a solo artist. So altogether, while the song is certainly not Beatles hit-single material, it adds up to what could have been a strong album cut and respectable addition to the band’s canon.
Given the band’s stature it should not be surprising that cover versions of the new tune are already appearing. Here it is fascinating to see others interpret how to render the song in a suitably Beatles key. Moving through the different eras, Dreamer Jazz re-imagines the song as it might have been played on Ed Sullivan, complete with video. DJS’s David A. Rodriguez really nails a host of early era Beatle-isms, including John’s distinctive rhythm guitar work. Apple Jam move the sound closer to the Hard Day’s Night/Help period and their considerable experience recreating the Beatles’ sound really comes through here. Timmy Sean takes inspiration from the same period but his sound ends up coming off more late seventies poprock, begging the question as to whether that might have been where the Beatles sound would have developed. Lastly Super 8’s version (that we featured before) takes things in a wholly new direction, even adding an original bridge to the song. In many ways, Super 8’s version is really the most creative interpretation, bold in its choices but still successful in execution.
Apple Jam
The Beatles really don’t need any more money but these clever cover artists surely do. Give them a visit to check out where their fab influences have taken them in their own work.
Poprock Record 