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| From | "Sager, Greg" <greg.sager@bankofamerica.com> |
| Subject | Love Nut and Myracle Brah |
| Date | Thu, 17 Jul 2003 06:09:36 -0500 |
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> Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 16:18:39 -0500
> From: "Billy G. Spradlin" <bgspradlin@cablelynx.com>
> To: audities@smoe.org
> Subject: Re: Love Nut
> Message-ID: <200307162118.h6GLITFh004385@lvapp13.prod.networkip.net>
>
> I see "Baltimucho" in baragan bins now and then - I think it's a excellent
> and
> tight album, less derivitive than Eartsnop and shamefully overlooked.
>
I thoroughly agree, Billy. In fact, I'm so high on *Baltimucho!*
that I rank it as one of my top ten albums of the past decade. Andy Bopp had
both Love Nut and Myracle Brah as his going concerns in 1998, and I was
disappointed when he decided to lay one of them to rest and it turned out to
be Love Nut.
Love Nut had a lot more punch to their sound than does Myracle Brah,
and less clutter (particularly compared to later MB efforts). Given the same
singer/songwriter within two bands and even a rough parity between their
releases in terms of compositional quality, I'll take the band that rocks
more than the other every time. As Billy says, *Baltimucho!* is the
best-sounding Bopp album thanks to Ed Stasium, but the self-produced
*Bastards Of Melody* (the first LN album) also has more sonic kick to it
than the MB albums. And I don't think that Bopp has written a batch of songs
to date that tops the menu he offered up on *Baltimucho!*
I'm no insider with regard to Andy Bopp's universe, but my
impression of things was that Love Nut was his band and Myracle Brah his
solo side project. Myracle Brah may or may not now be a bona-fide band, but
it still has the earmarks of an act that's essentially one man's vision. And
perhaps that's another reason why I favored Love Nut; a high percentage of
artists seem to do better work in a collaborative setting than they do when
only one person is making all of the creative decisions. I got the feeling
that, even though Bopp wrote all but one of *Baltimucho!*'s songs, Max
Mueller (the other guitarist, who wrote the non-Bopp track) had a lot of
input as to how the band sounded and what direction it took.
I do like Myracle Brah, and I own all four MB releases on Not Lame.
I agree with Stewart Mason regarding the band's derivativeness, particularly
on *Life On Planet Eartsnop*, although I think that that's the strongest
batch of songs Bopp has written yet for a MB album. I'm not entirely sure
why that should be an indictment of MB, however, given the constraints under
which contemporary power pop operates. Let's admit that, as AMG's "pop
underground" description says, power pop is a classicist subgenre. It may
not be as rigidly formulaic as rockabilly or hardcore punk, in that it's not
an unforgivable sin in power pop circles to refuse to ape a 1965 English
band or a 1979 skinny-tie band so closely as to be indistinguishable from
the genuine article. But there is a lot of formula involved in contemporary
power pop; this is not the subgenre for you if you place structural
innovation or challenging the listener at a premium. It's completely
acceptable, and half-expected, to hearken back to the original power pop
blueprints, because the tried-and-true of the Beatles, Big Star, Kinks, Who,
Beach Boys, Raspberries, etc., etc., is so revered as to grant cachet to
whoever can evoke them best.
That certainly doesn't mean that any act that pushes the envelope or
tweaks the formula here or there will be rejected, of course. But it does
mean that being derivative is hardly the worst thing that anyone can say
about a power pop act. In that regard, I cut Myracle Brah a certain amount
of slack. I can get my taste for something more musically daring whetted
elsewhere; meanwhile, I'll stick to holding Myracle Brah to the irreducible
standards for a power pop act, which are melody and songcraft, and in those
areas MB/Bopp is very successful, IMO.
>
>
> "Love Found You" might be my favorite Andy Bopp song - killer hook and
> chorus,
> it rock/pops like hell. It's also the best sounding Bopp album, thanks to
> Ed
> Statsum's fine Smithereens-like production.
>
"Love Found You" and the song right after it on *Baltimucho!*,
"Stolen Picture", are my two favorite Bopp songs.
Gregory Sager
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