smoe.org mailing lists
ivan@stellysee.de
| From | <jason.damas@gmail.com> |
| Subject | Slate Article: Power Pop and Its Discontents |
| Date | Fri, 27 May 2005 06:24:16 -0700 |
[Part 1 text/plain utf-8 (5.4 kilobytes)]
(View Text in a separate window)
<http://c.msn.com/c.gif?NA=1132&NC=1262&DI=4098&PI=7315&PS=61736>
mixing desk
Power Pop and Its Discontents
Five albums of hand claps, drum fills, and mopery.
By Douglas Wolk
Posted Friday, May 27, 2005, at 4:24 AM PT
Sloan
A Sides Win: Singles 1992-2005 (Koch)
Click here <http://img.slate.msn.com/media/50/sloanmcm.asf> to listen
to "Money City Maniacs."
Power pop isn't derived from the Beatles, exactly; it's derived from
bands that learned at the feet of the Beatles—Big Star, Badfinger, and
the Raspberries. The Canadian power-pop quartet Sloan knows perfectly
well that their boldest gestures, such as the lunging riff and the
grandstanding drum fills of "Money City Maniacs," could have been
scraped from the bottom of the Top 100 in 1974. But they play them with
absolute conviction and—another power-pop hallmark—the utter, bitter
certainty that they're being cheated out of the stardom they deserve.
The song's chorus is a sneaky triple rhyme, which the band sneers in
immaculate harmony: "And the joke is when he awoke his body was covered
in Coke fizz." That's what happens when you lie down with pop.
Spoon
Gimme Fiction (Merge)
Click here <http://img.slate.msn.com/media/77/spoonsisterjack.asf> to
listen to "Sister Jack."
Like Sloan, the Austin, Texas-based Spoon has been swimming upstream
since the early '90s and has plumbed its underdog status for lyrical
inspiration. In the first two lines of Gimme Fiction's "Sister Jack,"
singer/guitarist Britt Daniel articulates the two great themes of power
pop: frustrated desire ("Always on the outside, always looking in") and
the absurd machinations of the music world ("I was in this drop-D metal
band we called Requiem"—Spoon's bassist Joshua Zarbo actually was!). If
Daniel can't quite decide between his disaffected groan and his dramatic
falsetto, that's formally appropriate: The whole song presents two
things at once. It plays two sets of chords against each other, and
inserts disparate bursts of string-scraping noise and low-mixed
keyboards where a less imaginative band might have settled for a guitar
solo.
Various Artists
Yellow Pills: Prefill (Numero)
Click here <http://img.slate.msn.com/media/68/TomsSun.asf> to listen to
"Sun," by The Toms.
Valorizing one's outsider status naturally leads power pop to a
fascination with the dusty crannies of its own history. Jordan Oakes
compiled the Yellow Pills anthologies of half-forgotten power-pop
records in the '90s; he's been lured out of semiretirement to put
together Prefill, a new collection of the genre's really obscure
circa-1980 nuggets. For example, the Toms were the alter ego of a New
Jersey man named Tommy Marolda—the band should have been called the
Snares, given the way he smacks the song "Sun" into the treble zone with
every beat. (It's not an accident that another Prefill band was called
the Treble Boys, or that the compilation also includes songs called "I
Need That Record" and "You Need Pop"—power pop celebrates itself by
invoking records and record collectors.) The song itself is
uncomplicated third-generation psychedelia, but Marolda seems thrilled
by it, decorating every second with chimes, whooshes, and clouds of
one-man harmony.
Weezer
Make Believe (Geffen)
Click here <http://img.slate.msn.com/media/89/weezerperfect.asf> to
listen to "Perfect Situation."
On their fifth album, Weezer's auteur, Rivers Cuomo, is making no secret
of being royally sick of stardom—ending your CD booklet with the lines
from The Tempest in which Prospero breaks his staff isn't exactly
subtle. The songs on Make Believe are so bulky that the album moves at
the tempo of sarcastic slow-clapping. Its lyrics are exhausted,
apologetic, and drenched in the language of recovery ("let it go, the
damage in your heart"). The geeky fervor of their first few records is
missing—it's hard to sound like you're longing for acceptance (in the
way power pop demands) if you're already on the cover of Rolling Stone.
Still, a few songs reveal splendid moments, especially "Perfect
Situation," where a melody that flits about like a desperate moth gets
shoved aside by a battering-ram chorus of "oh, oh, oh" and a
nerd-guitar-hero solo.
The New Pornographers
"Twin Cinema" (Matador)
Click here <http://img.slate.msn.com/media/67/newportwinci.asf> to
listen to "Twin Cinema."
An MP3 officially leaked in advance of the New Pornographers' third
album (due in August), "Twin Cinema" is gloriously and typically
cryptic. What band leader Carl Newman sings about between Kurt Dahle's
drum flourishes is mostly nonsensical, except for the bit about a San
Francisco intersection. Does Newman's high, imploring voice mean he's
wound up about something? Who knows? What power pop has given him is a
set of rules for arranging songs: When in doubt, add high harmonies.
Make every repetition a little bit different somehow. More drum fills
are always better. Any interval between ear-candy moments is too long.
Tambourines make anything, no matter how chaotic, sound like you meant
it that way. Attack every note like it's the only chance you'll ever
have at a hit single, because that's what matters most.
Douglas Wolk is the author of Live at the Apollo.
Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2119565/
This is teased on the front of Slate.com today and I thought you'd all
be interested to see! As we all know, it's not often that "power pop"
gets such a prominent airing! --Jason
For assistance, please contact
the smoe.org administrators.