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Poprock Record’s 25 must-have LPs for 2021

08 Saturday Jan 2022

Posted by Dennis Pilon in Poprock Themepark

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Aaron Lee Tasjan, BPM Collective, Brent Seavers, Bruce Moody, Chris Church, Daryl Bean, Doublepluspop, Drew Beskin, Dropkick, Fishboy, Greg Townson, Henry Chadwick, James Henry, Ken Sharp, Lane Steinberg, Lo Talker, Lolas, Matthew Milia, Mike Browning, Nicholas Altobelli, Rich Arithmetic, Rich Mattson and the North Stars, Richard Turgeon, Richie Mayer, Robert Ellis Orrall, Ruen Brothers, Rumble Strip, Sorrows, Spygenius, Steve Robinson, Steve Rosenbaum, The Armoires, The Blendours, The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness, The Brothers Steve, The Cudas, The Friends of Cesar Romero, The Speedways, The Unswept, Tommy Ray, Underwater Sunshine

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.

Carefully crafted poprock: Ken Sharp, The Armoires, and Richard Turgeon

19 Monday Apr 2021

Posted by Dennis Pilon in Poprock Themepark

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Ken Sharp, Richard Turgeon, The Armoires

Some artists just belt it out. Others treat a song like sculpture, carefully teasing out the song’s essential elements with a perfectionist’s sense of sonic finesse. Today’s post features the latter, some very carefully crafted poprock to delight and entertain you.

Ken Sharp is an uber talented guy. Author of 18 non-fiction books, liner-notes writer to the stars, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and the guy’s got a great sense of style. I mean, his albums and singles always look amazing, wonderfully illustrated and featuring great sixties and seventies fonts and images. His just released record, Miniatures, breaks even more new ground, delivering 32 songs in just 41 minutes. They are miniatures in the sense of being short in length but also in terms of their execution. Each track is a carefully crafted sonic landscape, evoking different musical eras, songwriting styles, and moods. Album opener “Me and My Big Fat Mouth” sets the tone, establishing a Bacharachian precision in terms of song arranging while the tune exudes a Dionne Warwick or Neil Sedaka melodic sensibility. There are so many highlights here, I can’t possibly go into them all (though for an excellent deep dive into the album’s songs and inspirations, check out Keith Womack’s amazing coverage in Salon) so I’ll just riff on a few of my faves. On the whole, the record vibes an early 1970s pop sound, that intimate, glossy, compressed effect I associate with Partridge Family records, the Carpenters, folk pop artists of era like Cat Stevens, and the theme from the TV show Love, American Style. Having said that tracks like “Susannah Silently Shining” remind me a bit of Apples in Stereo while “Stack O’ Records” has a Big Star in acoustic mode feel. From there the album has so many jaunty, ambling-away-the-summer-days pop numbers, like “This Kiss,” “Every Day is Holly Day,” and “My Lullaby.” Sharp does occasionally let loose, upping the tempo on numbers like “Down the Drain” and the Costello-ish “Something’s Happening.” Baroque is a term often thrown around for this project and it sticks to songs like “Dollhouse,” “We’re Moving On,” album closer “Miniatures,” and the delightfully inventive and mannered “Black Coffee Cigarettes and Bach’s Minuet.” You can basically jump in anywhere on Miniatures and feel the delight, the whimsy, and a load of positive vibes. It’s all so nicely captured on what is probably my favourite tune from the record, the Cat Steven-ish sing-along “Count On Me.” Sharp definitely delivers a much-needed seasonal mood improver with this tuneful trove.

It all started with deceit. A group releases a series of singles under different band names, pretending to be separate acts with different styles. But when the ruse is revealed April 1st (naturally) it quickly becomes apparent that what began as a lark has turned into a serious musical accomplishment. Incognito reveals The Armoires as a much more ambitious, dynamic outfit than we ever imagined. The record’s focus splits three ways, between covers, country and an updated new wave sound (with some overlap). You’re exposed to the ambition behind the LP right away with the opening cut, the band’s inspired cover of John Cale’s “Paris 1919.”  Their interpretation effectively delivers on a poprock promise only implied in Cale’s original.  Other hooky contributions defy a singular style, vibing a nouveau Kirsty MacColl feel on “I Just Can’t See the Attraction” or a bit of the New Pornographers on “I Say We take Off and Nuke the Site from Orbit” or a Teenage Fanclub sensibility with the 2020 cover “The Night I Heard a Scream.” The country-ish contributions are equally affecting, from the old timey feel of “Bagfoot Country” to the more bluesy country of “Homebound” to the shot-glass soaked duet that is “Shame and Bourbon.” My own vote for should-be hit single is the breezy, rollicking “Great Distances” with its light touch of jangle and homey harmonies. And these are just the highlights for me – I could on. To sum, despite its variety in song and styles Incognito is definitely the work of one band, one that is discovering there really are few limits to what it can be and do.

Richard Turgeon has done it again. Defying the sequels curse, his second album of covers is a summer car-driving mix-tape champion. 10 Covers Volume 2 applies his Turgeon-izer (a distinctive dissonant hooky stamp) to classic songs from the 1960s, indie faves from the eighties and nineties, as well as songs that are barely a few years old. You’ve got to admire the cheek of trying to cover such classics as The Monkees’ “I’m a Believer” or The Mamas and Papas’ “California Dream’” but Turgeon pulls it off. The trick to effectively covering well known material is to offer up the familiar hooks but colour in some new melodic shading in unexpected ways or in different parts of the tune. Turgeon’s “I’m a Believer” is a little less manic than the original, a bit more indie-casual with some entertaining lead guitar embellishments. His “California Dreamin’” sounds a bit more believably desperate and stark. The cover of the Bryds’ “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” dials down the jangle, offering a more straight up rocking feel. Turning more recent material, I love the version of Potty Mouth’s “22” here. Turgeon turns an already great fun stomper into a power pop classic, with spot on vocals and great guitar lines. But his greatest reinvention on this album is a reworking of Hole’s “Malibu.” The guitar approach better anchors the melodic hooks of song while Turgeon’s vocals add an emotional depth that was missing from the original. Another song Turgeon improves on is Bobby Fuller’s “A New Shade of Blue” where, again, his singing adds something new. You really believe he’s got the blues! And there’s more – I haven’t even mentioned the nice Tom Petty, Oasis, and Cure covers. Suffice it to say, no drive to the beach is really gonna be complete without blasting this through the speakers this summer.

Craft like this deserves your monetary attention. You can click on Ken Sharp, The Armoires and Richard Turgeon right here and go directly to the source.

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