That Vernon Lynch Jr. of the K-9 Posse has an elder sibling named Eddie Murphy (a fact of life he addresses on “Somebody’s Brother”) might have helped his group get a record deal and hook up serious talent to play (including Nile Rodgers and Richie Fliegler) on its competently routine album, but Lynch’s writing and…
The Sunshine Boys conjured up by Neil Simon couldn’t abide each other, but that is clearly not the case with the Chicago indie-rock supergroup that borrowed the name. Singer/guitarist/keyboardist Dag Juhlin (Poi Dog Pondering, Slugs), bassist/singer Jacqueline Schimmel (Big Hello) and drummer/singer Freda Love Smith (Blake Babies, Antenna, Mysteries of Life) exude warmth, cohesion and…
As the singer of Talulah Gosh and Heavenly, Amelia Fletcher was considered the female voice of English twee, that fizzy romantic effervescence of indie guitar-pop in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Guest work with the Pooh Sticks and Wedding Present added to her iconic status in a musical network that connected Swansea and London…
It takes bottle to dub your band the name of a famous musician plus an article, especially when there is no audible connection to him. Unless the reference is to the American Revolutionary War naval commander, not the Englishman born John Baldwin. Regardless, the Brooklyn band led by Gabe Levine (later of the better-known Takka…
Before he became Frank Sidebottom, the late Chris Sievey led the Freshies, an ill-fated Manchester diy new wave band – more peppy power pop than punk – that got into the lower rungs of the British charts with a verbosely delightful 1980 single, “I’m in Love With the Girl on the Manchester Virgin Megastore Checkout…
On its one EP, the New Jersey trio plays smart-aleck power pop about such things as “High School Crush” and “Corner Telephone.” They have the sound down, but add little to distinguish it from others plying the same form. Tuneful but shallow. The group was later known as Pinstripes. A couple of decades later, Silly…
Half Australian and half British, Allo Darlin’ was something of a Commonwealth analogue to Holland’s Bettie Serveert. While their delightful and engaging guitar-and-ukulele pop is generally lighter in spirit and sound, leaning toward whimsy at times, the unique and memorable melodies, an off-kilter lyrical approach, the quartet’s gender composition and Elizabeth Morris’s distinctive vocals make…
Ed Rogers, a stylish English expat who lives in New York (where we first became friends in the early ’70s), is a prolific exponent of the power pop underground, a knowledgeable fan and scholar who channels his musical devotions into charming original creations that honor, echo – and ultimately expand upon – some of the…
This young Chicago quartet (whose bassist and singer, Bran Harvey, died of cancer in May 2020) must have been a great live band. On their lone CD, they distill the rangy guitar energy of Minneapolis’s indie rock titans — the Magnolias, Soul Asylum, Replacements and Hüsker Dü — into a joyful whoosh of stage-ready rock…
One sexy single of peppy new wave clichés (“Love on the Phone,” complete with period rototoms) earned the singer brief radio interest in 1980, but her lone time-capsule album — a random collection of styles, from rock to Ronstadt — contained nothing to extend her career beyond that.
A well-groomed quartet operating out of New York, the Brandos mine all the right influences and come up with dramatic, workmanlike melodic rock, occasionally displaying flashes of moral and political conscience, on their first album. Though too much of the band’s material lacks real distinction, Honor Among Thieves is a generally impressive debut, with singer/guitarist/producer…
Florida’s Tom Petty is one of the few American rockers to achieve lasting commercial stardom despite being (incorrectly) mistaken for a new waver at the outset. Hardly a wild-eyed punk, Petty has had a career almost the stuff of rock legend; Bob Seger is a close parallel. Having flopped with an early outfit called Mudcrutch,…
Shouted vocals and midspeed raw guitar punk provide Swansea’s Icons of Filth with their musical formula; generally well-put, lengthy political lyrics convey the band’s activist statements on such topics as class society, vivisection and nuclear war. (“You’re better active today than radioactive tomorrow” may not be catchy, but it is sane.) A far cry from…
With the potent, pliant vocals of Kelly Hogan leaping over slap bass, brush-stick drumming and acoustic guitar, the Jody Grind (reusing the name of a late-’60s British prog-rock trio; both borrowing from a Horace Silver jazz number) brought rocked-up energy and attitude to a pre-rock era sound. The Atlanta trio’s debut, One Man’s Trash Is…
What is about punk that attracts so many able young practitioners? The four members of Sparta, New Jersey’s Drop Zone — a couple of Murphy brothers, bassist Pat Marach and a guitar-playing singer named Steve who is pictured and listed but didn’t play on the record — were no more than 15 or 16 when…
Self-described as “a withered old embarrassment from Santa Monica, California, who, in spite of fervent listener indifference, or even antipathy, has been writing and recording music for over 50 years,” John Mendelssohn — now a longtime expat in the UK — earned his notoriety in the before time by being one of the gutsiest free thinkers…
One of power pop’s dichotomies is that some of the bands who pursue its ideals most enthusiastically (especially those who take the Beatles as their north star) are too formal and stiff, too retro and derivative, to be much good at it. The tougher end of Merseybeat may ultimately underpin the genre , but to…
The obsessions and ingredients that make Helen Love a mad scientist’s (and my) dream of giddy pop perfection may seem utterly random — punk rock, glam rock, bubblegum, disco, Joey Ramone, Debbie Harry, synthesizers, robotic vocal processors, ABBA, the Sweet, the Shangri-La’s, Wings, the Pooh Sticks, Talulah Gosh, “Planet Rock,” the Queers, Primitives, Rezillos, Freshies,…
For a time in the late-’80s, the most offbeat or imaginative thing about the well-scrubbed new crop of bland British chart-pop stars was their band names. The most notable element of this Anglo-American pabulum trio’s biography is that Calvin Hayes’ father is legendary ’60s pop producer Mickie Most. Turn Back the Clock alternately sounds like…
After the dissolution of Antenna, Jake Smith took over the bass job in the Indianapolis wing of the Vulgar Boatmen; the elemental intensity of that group’s frugal folk-pop strongly informs the Mysteries of Life, the delightful Bloomington group he and cymbal-shy wife Freda Love Smith (ex-Blake Babies and Antenna) unveiled in 1995. But, to a…
