power pop – Page 3

Free and legal MP3: Gross Ghost (reverby/jangly power-poppy garage rock)

“Leslie” stomps along with the complex buoyancy of any dark tale told to a toe-tapping beat and sing-songy melody.

“Leslie” – Gross Ghost

Delightful yet purposeful, “Leslie” is a short shot of reverby/jangly power-poppy garage rock, or maybe garage-rocky power pop. This one stomps along with the complex buoyancy of any somber tale told to a toe-tapping beat and sing-songy melody; the song’s narrator is talking to his father’s wife (~~not, clearly, his own mother~~ and yes it is about his own mother, my mistake; misunderstood the lyrics), formerly and maybe still currently a drug addict. The story’s curious, even random-seeming specificity is an intermittent indie-rock songwriting trait that can either intrigue or irritate, depending entirely on the strength of the music. A lot of times—as here—you can’t really follow the lyrics anyway; when the music is this melodic and insistent, if the lyrics are more sound than story, there’s no loss to the listener, from my point of view. It’s enough for phrases to emerge—in this case, the song coheres nicely around the chorus’s poignant line: “Feels like I’m watching you but no one’s watching me.” Or at least I think it’s the chorus, in that it sounds like a chorus musically, and yet we only hear it once. I’m assuming if the song were any longer than 2:26 we would have heard it again.

Gross Ghost is a band based in Durham, North Carolina. While details are sketchy, they appear to have started life as the duo of guitarist Mike Dillon and bassist William “Tre” Acklen, but at this point their Facebook page lists four members. The debut Gross Ghost album, Brer Rabbit, was released back in March on the Chapel Hill label Grip Tapes; a second vinyl pressing will be shipping next month. In the meantime, the band has since signed with Odessa Records, also based in Chapel Hill, which plans to release the follow-up album this coming spring. Thanks to the MP3 blog Faronheit for the head’s up.

Free and legal MP3: Wildlife Control

Think the Records crossed with Phoenix

“Analog or Digital” – Wildlife Control

The pumpkin ale may be arriving on the beer shelves, but I hope it’s not too late to slip a great summer song into your music library. In “Analog or Digital,” pure power-pop adrenaline meets a nimble 21st-century sound palette—think the Records crossed with Phoenix—and all that’s missing are people still listening to their car radios with the windows open. Not to mention radio stations that would play this. But you get the idea.

This one hardly needs any annotation—it’s got a head-bopping one-note bass line, an infectious melody, is three minutes long, and is about listening to records (a subject that forms its own important splinter group in the kingdom of power pop). Bonus points for the chorus’s recurring lyric “It doesn’t matter if she’s analog or digital,” which seems instantly zeitgeist-y—a brilliant blend of the concrete and vague, simple to sing along with, while inviting more meaning than it actually offers.

Wildlife Control is a duo comprised of brothers Neil and Sumul Shah. They grew up in rural northeastern Pennsylvania and are now bicoastal, with Neil in Brooklyn, Sumul in San Francisco. Their web site bio, which seems purposefully nebulous, notes that the brothers “collaborate on everything,” while offering no specifics on, say, who does the lead vocals, or who else helped them out in recording their album (“an ensemble of close friends” is the best we get). “Analog or Digital” has been running around the internet since December, in advance of the band’s first album, which was just self-released at the end of July. No worries about the anonymous-looking file name here, this one checks out as free and legal. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the original link.

Free and legal MP3: Slowdim

Sturdy, potent power pop

“Money” – Slowdim

A winner from beginning to end, “Money” is shrewdly constructed but gloriously unfussy, its pure (power) pop heart hearkening back to decades of rock radio hits without any air of contrivance or over-retro-ism. Songs this well-built rarely sound so free.

It begins with a “two-level” intro—10 seconds of restrained warm-up, the guitars swirling and jangling but as if from maybe the next room; then, the real thing, with a full-bodied, sing-along lead guitar riff that first grabs attention and then gets out of the way so the song can start. Less obvious than the great guitar line here is the note with which the bass launches said guitar line (listen carefully at 0:11), a nifty music-theory maneuver that adds subliminal texture and alerts the ear, however unconsciously, that what follows is worth listening to. I like too how the two-part intro is a subtle mirror of the heart of the song, with its two-part chorus. Speaking of which, listen to how what you might call the pre-chorus (first heard at 0:45) is itself a great hook and yet feels incomplete without the arrival of the true chorus. Note that the song’s title derives from the pre-chorus—another subtle songwriting trick, simultaneously adding substance to the pre-chorus while creating, via the pre-chorus’s unresolved melodies, an emotional demand for the second part, which delivers a spirited release with its layered harmonies and gratifying, descending melody.

Not to be confused with the British shoegaze band Slowdive, Slowdim is a four-piece band from Boston that has been together for about a year, although various combinations of its members have known each other for a good deal longer. “Money” is the band’s first single. They are currently recording their debut album. MP3 via the band.

Free and legal MP3: Marvelous Darlings (Buzzcocks style power pop)

It’s loud and muscular but it’s an honest-to-goodness song, with a primitive, ear-catching riff, nostalgic melodies, and any number of musical moments one might almost call graceful except for the general head-bangy ambiance.

Marvelous Darlings

“I Don’t Wanna Go To The Party” – Marvelous Darlings

I’ve never had an ear for the harsher, DIY-fueled end of the punk spectrum. But neither have I found the more blatantly commercial “punk-pop” genre very satisfying. My sweet spot is for the sort of punk or punk-like music made by folks who may be angry, or alienated, or otherwise fed up but still manage to have their musical wits about them. My opinion is that if you’re too angry to be bothered to learn exactly how to write and perform music, maybe you should just leave the music out of it entirely? One man’s perhaps unreasonable idea.

Anyway, with stuff like this, whether in its original, Buzzcocks-y incarnation or when trotted out in the new(ish) century by a crew like Marvelous Darlings, I’m all in. It’s loud and muscular but it’s an honest-to-goodness song, with a primitive, ear-catching riff, nostalgic melodies, and any number of musical moments one might almost call graceful except for the general head-bangy ambiance. There is, for instance, that place in the relentless, mostly two-note melody when singer Ben Cook takes a fifth-interval downward dive (0:36), and it’s just exactly right. And you kind of wait for it to come back and it doesn’t, and it doesn’t, until finally very close to the end, it does (2:08). This more than makes up for Cook’s decision to add an over-the-top British affectation to the word “party,” which is probably in any case a private joke of some kind.

An additional moment of odd grace: how the interwoven repetition of the basic theme (“I don’t want to go”) we hear at 1:04 resolves into a syncopated, falsetto release at 1:11. The song hammers us unflaggingly with a classic rock’n’roll backbeat and yet offers us a few moments like this one that dance away from it. Another is the brief but dandy guitar solo (1:44-1:54).

Marvelous Darlings is a Toronto band featuring Cook and Matt Delong, who were co-founders of the Canadian hardcore band No Warning; Cook, who also performs under the name Young Governor, is best known these days as a member of the Toronto band Fucked Up, which somewhat unexpectedly won Canada’s Polaris Prize in 2009 for best Canadian album. “I Don’t Wanna Go To The Party” is the lead track on Single Life, an album comprised of previously released 7-inch vinyl singles, put out this week by the Canadian label Deranged Records. MP3 via Deranged. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the lead.

Free and legal MP3: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (succinct & jittery, w/ a power pop heart)

This time around, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah exhibits a Cars-like capacity for wrapping an edgy, synthesizer-led, contemporary vibe around old-school rock’n’roll melodicism.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

“Maniac” – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Succinct and jittery, “Maniac” does its best to disguise its power pop roots with multifaceted synthesizers and vocal effects (and affects) but the thing about power pop is in the end there’s no hiding it. The chorus gives it away pretty much by definition. So there it is, at 1:09, the power-pop heart of this otherwise anxious-seeming song.

And yes I realize that it’s anxious-seeming in good part because Alex Ounsworth, with his strangled, nasally tenor, makes David Byrne sound almost relaxed. CYHSY have in fact drawn a lot of Talking Heads comparisons in the past, for clear enough reasons, but this time around I find some unexpected linkage to a different band that arose in late-’70s New England—the Cars. “Maniac” doesn’t sound like the Cars as much as it behaves like them, for its successful wrapping of an edgy, synthesizer-led, contemporary vibe around old-school rock’n’roll melodicism. Though, on second thought, this may likewise sound more like the Cars than it might initially seem. Segue “Maniac” into “Gimme Some Slack” (Spotify users: give it a try) and you will find some wonderful resonance—not an exact fit by any means, but the echoes are there. I direct your ears in particular to the deep guitar line at 2:07, which introduces what works as a kind of an alternate chorus here, and is both very Cars-like and a beautiful power pop device. That’s really where everything comes together in this one.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is a five-man band from Brooklyn with a bit of internet history that you either know already or don’t need to know. Seriously. Forget about it. Let’s just listen to the music, sports fans. “Maniac” is a track from their upcoming album, Hysterical, which the band will self-release next month. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Almost Free

P
ower pop gem w/ multi-decade inspiration

Almost Free

“Really Don’t Know (About You) – Almost Free

So on the surface, this one is a brisk and catchy bit of power pop, or something like it. The sing-along-style chorus, turning on the repetition, across the beat, of a mundane phrase (“really don’t know”), nails it as a chewy little piece of ear candy to be sure. But “Really Don’t Know (About You)” is a good deal more than that if you care to investigate.

Listen, to begin with, to the introduction, with its ear-catching combination of a nimble beat and an unusual interval, as Andy (not Andrew) Bird, grabs his guitar high up the neck and itches out a reiterating major sixth interval in a loose, ever-evolving manner. This sixth—nine half steps—is an notably wide leap between two notes in a pop song and even though it’s a consonant (i.e. not dissonant) interval there’s something fluid and unsettled about it. The introduction’s music haunts the rest of the song. Meanwhile, the melody in the verse then turns around and features downward leaps, while likewise touching most of the notes in the scale before it’s done—usually the sign of savvy songwriting. (A nice, related touch is how the guitar itself runs up the scale in between the chorus and verse [1:05].)

When we get to the aforementioned chorus, the song solidifies and expands and—this is the real trick to listen carefully for—marries five decades’ worth of influences into a hook casual enough to have been born in a ’60s garage yet grand enough to stand with any new wave or post-punk anthem. Here is a song, furthermore, informed by the Smiths’ seminal ’80s work as well as by the ’90s britpop that followed, even as it keeps wanting to sound like something from 1977…except for all that 21st-century guitar work and scronky noise. All in all what’s happening here is enough to blow a Pandora algorithm’s mind (if only a Pandora algorithm had a mind). I like.

“Really Don’t Know (About You)” is from Almost Free’s In/Out EP, due out in June. The Detroit-based trio has been playing together for seven years, with one full-length album released to date, back in 2009.

Free and legal MP3: Big Eyes (power-poppy-punky)

Big Eyes

“Why Can’t I” – Big Eyes

You hear that thing in the introduction, that instrument that establishes both the ambiance and the melody with its crunchy electric drive? That’s a guitar. And you know what you do with a guitar? You either play it (if you’re in the band) or you listen to it (if you’re not in the band). This guitar you’re hearing doesn’t need you to remix it or loop it or make an app out of it. It’s just a terrific power-poppy-punky guitar part, with a strong lineage (hear “Starry Eyes” in it, a little? not to mention any number of Cheap Trick songs?) and a good heart. Listen and love it and don’t forget that listening—really listening—is as interactive an activity as there is.

Front woman Kate Eldridge, formerly in a band called Cheeky, has a really effective DIY-ish voice—forceful, maybe even a little bratty, unschooled, but not (praise the lord) out of tune, and not so muddied up in the mix that you can’t sense the personality behind the voice. This is a little kid’s plea, after all—“Why can’t I…?”—and yet there’s more happening here than may first meet the ear. Yes, Eldridge’s slightly snotty tone creates the surface impression that she is, little-kid-ishly, asking after something she feels entitled to but isn’t getting. But check out the pivotal lyric: “Sometimes you make me so mad/All I want to do is treat you bad/Baby now why can’t I just love you all the time?” She’s really wondering about that deeper thing that drives people who love each other into opposing camps. She sees her own limitations; her “why can’t I” isn’t railing against her external circumstances as much as her internal ones. This laces her brashness with a vulnerability that informs all three minutes and twenty-three seconds of this spiffy piece of good old rock’n’roll.

Big Eyes are a trio from Brooklyn. They have released a tape (yes, a tape), and a 7-inch single prior to this, their latest 7-inch single, issued earlier this month by Don Giovanni Records. The band’s debut LP is due out in May.

Free and legal MP3: Bad Books (punchy power pop, w/ lyrical vigor)

“You Wouldn’t Have To Ask” – Bad Books

Sounding like something the Breeders might have recorded for Beatles ’65, “You Wouldn’t Have To Ask” hangs its musical hopes and dreams upon that left-field chord we hear first at 0:07 and then keep waiting to hear a few more times. But this song is so sturdy and succinct we actually hear it only once more, with emphasis (1:06), in the instrumental run-through of the verse. It’s a set-up chord, a place you go to but can’t stay at, so what we’re really waiting for is not the chord again as much as the payoff. Said payoff is delivered via that very Beatley chord progression from 1:39 to 1:41, which in turns sets up the equally Beatley set of concluding chords from 1:46 to 1:50. The song ends there on a dime because, well, it’s done its job.

And that would be enough already, but “You Wouldn’t Have To Ask” is much enhanced by its off-handedly brilliant lyrical conceit, which provides a truly great pop songwriting moment: the titular phrase is a powerful way of communicating both the connection and the disconnection between two people. If I had what you’re looking for I’d give it to you, the singer says: “You wouldn’t have to ask.” But a darker side is implied, since theoretically the other person knows this too; “You wouldn’t have to ask” may, therefore, be either pledge (“I’d give it without your asking”) or accusation (“You know I don’t have it, so why are you asking?”) and most likely a complex blend of both. Even in this short song, the complexities of the phrase are developed and deepened; I find the last iteration especially haunting, with the singer at the end now saying, “If I could help you/You wouldn’t have to ask.”

Bad Books is a project fronted by Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter Kevin Devine and Andy Hull, of Atlanta’s Manchester Orchestra; other members of Manchester Orchestra comprise the rest of the band. “You Wouldn’t Have To Ask” is a song from the group’s self-titled debut, which was released digitally last month and physically this month on Favorite Gentlemen Recordings, a label founded in Atlanta by members of Manchester Orchestra. MP3 via Favorite Gentlemen. Thanks to the blog Eardrums for the lead.

Free and legal MP3: Telekinesis (buzzy power pop)

The Seattle-based one-man-band Telekinesis is back with more of that chunky, buzzy, power poppy goodness.

“Car Crash” – Telekinesis

The Seattle-based one-man-band Telekinesis is back with more of that chunky, buzzy, power poppy goodness. “Car Crash” starts with a thin, AM-radio sound and a rich, NRBQ-ish melody. Roughly 30 seconds in, the full sound hits—and a bottom-heavy sound at that, all fuzzy bass and driving percussion—but hang on a second, what’s he actually singing about?: “Will I die alone?/You know, I’m so concerned/You know, I’m so confused/Like a lost child, a little lost child.” This is surely not what the music is telling us, so yeah, this is one of those “sad words/happy music” juxtapositions that can be so strangely appealing. Let’s not forget that this zippy, sing-along-y confection is called “Car Crash,” after all. And while it may be reasonable to imagine the end of love as a car crash, I think I’m hearing here the equation of a car crash to the random, uncontrollable, confusing beginning part, too: falling in love as car crash.

Telekinesis is the work of 24-year-old Seattle-based singer/songwriter/drummer Michael Benjamin Lerner. Like last year’s self-titled debut album, the new Telekinesis album was produced by Chris Walla (Death Cab For Cutie) and performed largely by Lerner. He is however taking two band mates on the road and has intimated that Telekinesis may be in the process of turning into an actual band (a “power trio,” in his words). The forthcoming album is called 12 Desperate Straight Lines and will be released on Merge Records in February. ~~MP3 via Spin.com.~~

Free and legal MP3: Apex Manor (chunky, peppy rocker, w/ rhythm shifts)

“Under the Gun” – Apex Manor

A chunky, peppy rocker, “Under the Gun” hooks the ear initially with some insouciant time signature manipulation. (Yes, there’s nothing like some insouciant time signature manipulation to brighten the day!) But okay, bear with me as I flail around in an effort to explain. So do you hear that spiraling guitar theme in the introduction (starts around 0:12)? This appears to be in 6/4 time, as does the entire introduction. The song itself, meanwhile, thumps along in standard 4/4 time (initial switchover at 0:23). As you can see, this isn’t a jarring change—the basic rhythmic unit is the same, and the number of beats remains even—but it’s kind of all the more wonderful as a result. You don’t even necessarily register it consciously, but the two extra beats create this ingenious tension because on the one hand it’s freeing and spacious while on the other hand it feels borrowed, evanescent, a passing fancy, maybe an aural illusion. The 6/4 theme recurs a couple of times, including an iteration at 1:53 that leads into an odd little bridge that doesn’t seem to have any time signature at all. Fun!

I don’t think a song that plays so casually and deftly with its rhythm can be anything but well-constructed and compelling. It helps that front man Ross Flournoy (recognize him from the Broken West? maybe?) has one of those comfortable catchy-song tenors, recalling the likes of McCartney and Tilbrook, to name two minor singing/songwriting heroes from days of yore. As with the Broken West, the appeal is in part how familiar the overall sound is, without coming across like a retread. While not as blatantly power poppy as the Broken West could be, “Under the Gun” employs the time-honored power-pop trick of delayed resolution—you want it but don’t get it, in the chorus, at 0:49, but hang on a bit longer and you get it all the more gratifyingly (wait for it) at 1:03 through 1:06.

The Broken West split up, without much chatter, in September 2009. Apex Manor was born as the Pasadena-based Flournoy’s response to an NPR songwriting contest, of all things. Bassist Brian Whelan, also from the Broken West, joins him in the new quartet, along with Adam Vine and Andy Creighton. “Under the Gun” will be on the debut Apex Manor album, The Year of Magical Drinking, slated for a January release on good old Merge Records.