I Get So Mean Around This Scene: Joe Jackson’s ‘Look Sharp!’ at 45
With his 1979 debut album Look Sharp!, Joe Jackson joined the league of UK artists who fused sophisticated pop songwriting with a punk snarl.
With his 1979 debut album Look Sharp!, Joe Jackson joined the league of UK artists who fused sophisticated pop songwriting with a punk snarl.
Power pop has to have some punch. This can be manifested in different ways but is frequently through a hook-laden electric guitar line.
Pugwash mastermind Thomas Walsh excels at Beatlesque power pop, sounding like a cross between ELO and baroque-era Trash Can Sinatras.
Flat Mary Road break through with Little Realities and deliver jangly, hook-laden power-pop with a touch of Harry Chapin thrown in for good measure.
The sophistication of Charlie Kaplan’s gorgeous LP is impressive and a reminder that sometimes the simplest, sincere gestures are the warmest and longest-lasting.
The simple joys of writing songs and sharing them remain the driving forces for indie pop veterans Teenage Fanclub. Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley discuss.
Mississippi husband-and-wife duo Bark offer up power pop filtered through a hazy lens of distortion on Loud, their most fully realized work yet.
Man on Man excel at delivering pop hooks in various ways across rock genres, and with ten tracks at 42 minutes, there’s plenty of playful joy on Provincetown.
Ramones’ Ramones uses reduction as a means to end, to bring rock back to its roots, whereas Devo’s Q: Are We Not Men? uses reduction as the end itself to mirror society’s decline.
On Everything Harmony the Lemon Twigs echo and even improve on their 1970s influences with such skill and spirit that they demand we take them seriously.
Continue As a Guest is a more delicate and less hooky version of the New Pornographers, the most reflective they’ve been since 2007’s underrated Challengers.
Spilt Milk is one of the great accomplishments of pop history: a colossus that bestrides pop music and crushed Jellyfish, the band that made it.