It’s almost summer. The weather is warm, Sun is shining, Venus is crossing. It’s weather for power pop, it’s weather for the Beach Boys. In today’s show we review the most interesting power pop tunes of today and among them, the new return for one of the biggest inspirations for power pop – the Beach Boys. Mike Love, Al Jardine and Brian Wilson are back together with the new album called That’s Why God Made The Radio. Talking about the Beach Boys, we also have the new record for Nelson Bragg, who played with them for awhile. Then we have Pugwash from Ireland who can definitely harmonize like the Beach Boys. Golden Boys are not so close to the beach, they are from Austin TX and their new record Dirty Fingernails is one of the most exciting records this season. New band and a fine example of good power pop are the Successful Failures who named themselves after a Jack London short story and they come from New Jersey. Tom Oberon comes from Connecticut and he’s a one man power pop band called Oberon Rose. His album Wunjo is free of charge on his soundcloud website. Lemon Clocks come from Liverpool and they have deliberately old fashioned sound on their new album Now Is The Time. Sea of Bees are two ladies with esoteric pop sound and finally, Songs For Snakes come from San Francisco and they bland fine melodies with loud guitars.
Utopia – Say Yeah;
Buffalo Tom – Summer;
The Successful Failures – How People Start Sentences;
Guided By Voices – Class Clown Spots a Ufo;
Oberon Rose – One Man Show of Sorrow;
The Golden Boys – We Are Young;
Gentleman Jesse and His Men – Highland Crawler Black Hole;
John Wesley Coleman – Don’t Waste My Time;
Songs For Snakes – St. Mary;
Nelson Bragg – You Could Believe;
Mike O’Neill – Say You Don’t Mean It;
Pugwash – Fall Down;
NRBQ – Here I Am;
The Lemon Clocks – The Bright Side;
Jay Gonzalez – Punch of Love;
John Larson – Billy and Wiggy;
Sea Of Bees – Gone;
Beach Boys – Summer’s Gone.
And… we’re back from our usual Summer break. The break was long, but without huge shakes in musical world. Also, not too many great records happened in the past two months while we were gone. My favorite record this summer is definitely Rainer Ptacek session with Calexico members that came out now, but it was recorded way back in 1997, mere months before Rainer passed away. The cd is called Roll Back The Years, and I really wish I could. We lost a lot when Rainer left 14 years ago. From Austin, we have new records for The Krayolas and John Wesley Coleman. From Memphis, we have new records for Jack Oblivian and Bo-Keys. We also have new Brian Wilson, whose new record is centered around Disney movies.
Today we begin with two obituaries. I’ve only recently heard that Kenny Gethway has passed away in April this year. He was very young and practically at the beginning of his musical career with two of his brothers in this band called Monstrous. I really liked their 2006 album Mother Nature’s Slaves. Somewhat silently they published another album in 2009 called Brothers Gethway, but I only got it now. In any case, my hope is that the other two brothers will continue to make music as great as it was with Kenny when they recuperate. Another loss for rock’n’roll is Ari Up from The Slits, who cause quite a stir back in the days of post punk with their record Cut. Ari Up passed away last week, she was just 48. Today’s show is dedicated to Kenny and Ari. We also have a few new things today. Giant Sand have a new record called Blurry Blue Mountain and Howe Gelb just celebrated his 54th birthday. Other two big rockers, Brian Wilson and Neil Young also have new records out. Neil Young has a noisy guitar album called Le Noise and Brian Wilson has an interesting record where he reimages and reinvents old George Gershwin songs.