power pop – Page 4

Free and legal MP3: Two Hours Traffic (crackling power pop from Canada)

“Noisemaker” – Two Hours Traffic

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming: sharp, catchy, summertime pop from our impressively talented musical neighbors to the north. That’s more like it, eh?

This song has many things to love, and right away. First, the brisk, ringing guitar intro, which is not merely a persuasive opening salvo, but sounds brilliant following just about any other song on a playlist. Try it at home, you’ll see. Second, the way the voices join in, singing wordlessly, with the brisk, ringing guitars. Subtle and wonderful. Third, the fleet, wonderful sidestep taken from that guitar riff into the “oooooh” that opens the verse. Nifty, effortless little chord progression there. And then, oh boy, what about that “oooooh” itself? Straight out of the power pop handbook (Shoes, anyone?) and yet also a surprise coming right at the beginning like that. If they didn’t have me at hello, they surely had me at “oooooh.” The song is now about 23 seconds old. (And lasts 3:41–also as per the power pop handbook.)

Singer Liam Corcoran has just the right kind of spirited tenor required to make this crackle and resonate. It’s about energy, not content, as the thing about great power pop is that no one has to be singing about anything that is in itself all that powerful or intriguing; rather, there’s something in the music and presentation that makes whatever is being sung pretty much besides the point. It’s all deep and mysterious when the melody’s there, and the chords, and the unflagging energy of a band that knows it’s onto something. Songs like this often push that extra bit harder to knock your socks off, and I hear that here in the second half of the chorus, which uses a bit of unanticipated repetition to add an almost giddily satisfying resolution beyond the basic hook.

Two Hours Traffic is a foursome from Prince Edward Island. “Noisemaker” is the lead track (of course) from the band’s third album, Territory, which was released last year in Canada, and is due out in the U.S. in September via Bumstead Productions.

Free and legal MP3: Shout Out Louds (unusually structured power pop)

Musically astute and thematically cohesive, “Walls” features an odd, almost discomfiting build-up. First, we get front man Adam Olenius singing over stark bass and drums accompaniment, the melody hard to discern. After the sparse, foreboding opening verse, a piano riff arrives to mix things up a bit but listen to how the bass note persists, and keeps the ear from sensing any resolution.

“Walls” – Shout Out Louds

Musically astute and thematically cohesive, “Walls” features an odd, almost discomfiting build-up. First, we get front man Adam Olenius singing over stark bass and drums accompaniment, the melody hard to discern. (I suggest paying attention to that bass note–a D, I believe–because it is not going away for a while.) After the sparse, foreboding opening verse, a piano riff arrives to mix things up a bit but listen to how the bass note persists, and keeps the ear from sensing any resolution.

The full band kicks in with a second verse, followed by the piano riff again, and then a third verse, and all the while, sure enough, the bass pounds that one same note. If you’re feeling a bit claustrophobic by now that’s why. Because of the intervening piano riff we may not quite realize we haven’t heard a chorus yet, but here we are, two minutes into the song, and nope, we haven’t. It feels as if the song has stayed in one chord this whole time. Then, at 2:15, we are released: the chorus arrives, almost transcendently, using the piano riff melody but now set free from the one-note bass anchor. The forcefully sung lyrics seem especially consequential in this setting, and we hear them now three times running because there are no more verses left. By 3:15, the song is done and it’s like we don’t really know what hit us. But it was good.

Shout Out Louds are a quintet from Sweden; “Walls” will be found on the album Work, their third, due out on Merge Records in February. MP3 via Merge.

Free and legal MP3: Wiretree (power pop with ’70s roots)

“Back in Town” – Wiretree

Brisk, spangly power pop from an Austin-based quartet. Equal parts mid-career Wilco and early (or late; who can say?) Traveling Wilburys, “Back in Town” is a friendly, xylophone-flecked burst of tunefulness, anchored in singer Kevin Peroni’s pliable, evocative voice. What he sounds like, in a nutshell, is the ’70s–Harry Nilsson, George Harrison, and Jeff Lynne rolled up into one. Works for me.

And if there are a few relative oldsters out there who recognize the chorus of the Indigo Girls song “Jonas & Ezekiel” in the chorus of “Back in Town,” well, I’m always kind of tickled rather than irritated by inadvertent melody transference like this. First off, it’s a heck of a good melody–I might dare to call it anthemic except I fear that word has been neutered by years of overuse. Second, the songs don’t otherwise have anything to do with each other. I don’t mind greeting an old friend in a new outfit.

“Back in Town” is a song from the band’s second full-length album, Luck, ready for release next week on their own Cobaltworks label.

Free and legal MP3: The Hush Now (subtly contagious neo-power pop)

“Hoping and Waiting” – the Hush Now

After a church-like organ intro, “Hoping and Waiting” turns upbeat and unexpectedly contagious. I had to live with it a while for the catchiness to sink in, however; it’s not a completely obvious hook. But after listening to it on and off for a few weeks, I noticed that it was beginning to pop unbidden into my head. This is almost always a sign of a song that I am liking more than I initially realize I’m liking it.

The part that kept popping into my head: that particular place in the chorus where the melody takes a leap up on the word “heart” (first heard around 1:19). Talk about uplifting–just hearing that word sung with that upward leap settles something in my soul. And then the immediate follow-up, the word “anticipating” sung (on the second syllable) with that same up-leap. Brilliant. As for the operatic tenor interlude (2:42), it shouldn’t really work, but it does, precisely when (and because) the tenor ramps up into a classical frenzy concurrently with singer Noel Kelly repeating the lines “Did you feel? Did you feel? Did you feel?” Also brilliant. And then suddenly a trumpet that had been lurking in the background materializes front and center, adding the feeling of an offbeat fanfare to the closing measures. I like it.

The Hush Now is a quartet from Boston. “Hoping and Waiting” will appear on their second album, Constellations, due out as a self-release in October. (If you’re interested, the band started giving its self-titled debut album away for free online earlier this year; you can still grab it here.)

Free and legal MP3: Alibi Tom (slightly skewed power pop)

“Sometimes I’m Afraid” – Alibi Tom

In today’s global, fragmented, hyperactive indie-rock marketplace, one can never know whether a band with a good song is fated to flame out or make a solid career of it. The internet’s relentless focus on the next new thing feeds on the flame-outs, but in so doing ignores the genuine gratification to be had from being witness to the ongoing flowering of an appealing musical sensibility.

Which is all sort of a needlessly complicated way of saying hey, Gothenburg’s Alibi Tom is back with an excellent new MP3. (And Alibi Tom itself is an outgrowth of Out of Clouds, also previously featured.) With bright guitar lines and personable vocals, “Sometimes I’m Afraid” hooks me most of all with a chorus that delivers a full power-pop wallop even as it cagily withholds a lot at the same time–listen to how the band retreats under the melody, which ends up being supported largely by a rapid-fire bass line and a lot of cymbals. That’s the kind of backing you might hear at the end of a lyrical line, not sustained through an entire chorus; the juxtaposition of that nervous sound with a great melodic hook is oddly irresistible to me, and relates to the song’s broader and equally appealing juxtaposition of cheerful vibe and pensive lyrics.

“Sometimes I’m Afraid” is an altered, “radio edit” version of a song that originally appeared on Scrapbook, the band’s 2008 debut, on the British label Leon. (The band’s previous TWF pick, “Fire,” is from the same album.) MP3 via the band’s web site.

Free and legal MP3: The Blue Eyed Blacks (fuzzed up power pop)

“The Wrong Thing” – Blue Eyed Blacks

A sprightly piece of neatly crafted power pop, fuzzed up by some 21st-century effects. Front man Jason Moon Wilkins has an amiably droopy sort of voice and a keen knack for hooks. The way he breaks the chorus up by repeating the word “always”? Ending one musical phrase with the word, then beginning the next musical phrase with the same word? Love that.

The Blue Eyed Blacks are a trio from Nashville not shy about utilizing the talents of their peers on the always active local music scene; Justin Townes Earle and Garrison Starr are among the many guests who sat in on the band’s debut album, Black Eyed Soul, which is due for release in October on Chicken Ranch Records.