pop goes the weasel

(See, Paul upped the ante by making an actual long entry. Hmm. Well there's a little something that I've been working on for my lastfm journal, I might as well trot it out here.)


Man, that monkey was a dick. Why'd he have to chase the weasel around the mulberry bush, anyway?

Over the past few years I have discovered something: I am a pop nerd. Though at first I had an incredibly adverse reaction to the very word - it conjured up images of Britney Spears, N'Sync, and all that crap. (also, we in the South generally just call it Coke, or soda if we actually have to refer to Pepsi products. So I never used that definition of the word, either.)

However, as I got into college, I started to realize that the worth of a song was not in how heavy it could be, nor how long a 'singer' could maintain a tortured scream. I started getting more into bands that had some catchy songs; stuff like 'hooks' and 'melody' started to make their way into my music vocabulary. It might have been the fact that I was actually listening to the Beatles at this point - and those fellows made some of the best pop music ever made. Though at first I bemoaned how much I loved The Postal Service, within a few days of owning their album I was unashamed. I still don't listen to Top 40 (though there can be an occasional catchy/fun song from there) but my tastes have definitely gone more along the lines of pop-influenced rock.

A few suggestions!

Electric Light Orchestra - These guys are cheesy as hell, but I love them. Basically they're overblown, ostentatious late 70s/early 80s space rock. There are hooks aplenty, classical-esque music going along in the background, and occasionally one of those robot voice synthesizers singing along. They're heavily Beatles-influenced, but despite what Paul might say, that's not a bad thing. The best part is that I've only heard one of their albums, Out of the Blue, so I still have plenty to discover.

Beulah - Indie rock with a horns section. Their second album, When Your Heartstrings Break, is quite possibly the best summer album in the past decade. The song "Emma Blowgun's Last Stand" is what I define as audio nirvana. Though later on in their career they became a little less happy-go-lucky, they've still got some good tunes even on their last album, Yoko. By then the horns have gone away, sadly.

The New Pornographers - Canadian supergroup with tremendous pop appeal, and the vocal talents of alt-country lady Neko Case. Paul says they sound like 60s and 70s rock, which I can kind of see. They have a very weird, jangly pop sound that I can't place but that I absolutely adore. I'd say their best album is Electric Version, but you can't go wrong with any of them.

Stars - another Canadian group with male and female singers. They're kinda cutesy, which is a mark against them, but they have some great songs. Set Yourself on Fire is probably one of the best albums out today. Just a warning, though: stay far, far away from their cover of the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York". They turn up the cute-factor by ten and it doesn't quite work for an incredibly sad/heartfelt song. (In fact, if you haven't heard that Pogues song, listen to it immediately.)

The Zombies - basically just listen to Odessey and Oracle. Picture-perfect psychedelic pop. (Oh, alliteration.) A real forgotten treasure of the 60s.

The Boo Radleys - Talk about forgotten treasures; this was a band that lived the very dangerous existence of being in Britain in the early 90s - in other words, if you weren't Blur or Oasis, you had to struggle to survive, much less make your way over to the States. (Not like today... seriously, has Britain stopped cranking out shitty Strokes ripoffs yet?) Because of this, I hadn't ever heard of these guys until Robbie burned me a copy of their album Wake Up! It is pretty much what I would call perfection. It's got some weird shoegaze-y moments, balanced perfectly with pop flourishes. Track it down sometime - I'm still trying to find a physical copy of this.

Architecture in Helsinki - another band that treads the 'cutesy' line dangerously close. I would say that they sound like the Fiery Furnaces, only they keep their songs closer to 2-3 minutes than 9-10, and also they don't suck.


Alright, that's a few names that I have dropped. Enjoy my pop culture brain drippings, peons!