Smother Magazine
Dude. Synth-pop with melodies so infectious they spread faster than HIV at a swinger’s party, Hooray for Earth just is dripping wet with fucking awesome choruses. The Boston-based group plays fun-filled and energetic melodic pop-rock that’s a clear alternative to all of those bland woe-is-me singer/songwriters that seem to dominate the underground scene these days. I love that their guitars sound as big as Lady Liberty. Amazingly tight and a complete uniform good time. Sweet!
British slop punkers XX Teens had their latest produced by the U.K.’s own Sheffield-based Ross Orton (Fat Truckers, MIA). Swampy melodies are smelted with Lemmy-oriented hymns and stripped down rhythms. The guitars are often quite dense but yet somewhat poppy still. Churning rock ‘n’ roll that will appeal to late 40-somethings as well as their kids.
Power pop chords chug away with infinite harmonies leaking out and forming a swirling lollipop around which this Baltimore-based pop icon Edward Joseph Neenan forges dynamic songs. He brings to E. Joseph and the Phantom Heart his crafty ability to build bridges between divergent melodies amid smooth grooves in uncanny. The album opener could very well be heard throughout mainstream pop radio with killer guitar hooks and a seminal nod to retro alternative pop-rock. Power-pop this golden needs to be shared with anyone who will listen. Essential.
Cheap Girls debut full-length’s title “Find Me a Drink Home” sounds like it was some side project of Brett Michaels back in the ‘80s. But I assure you it is far removed from that cheapened hair metal. Using poetic lyrics that are far from sober but far from titty bar drunken, Cheap Girls write pop-rock melodies with sweeping power-pop anthems that are guitar-centric and fun-filled but not much else…but isn’t that enough these days?
Besides their silly attempt to play dress up and look like some cast-off fifth Beatle, Coldplay’s most recent foray into the music world finds them teaming up with oddball ambient man Brian Eno as producer. Eno paints a vivid portrait of incredibly intricate pop music whose choruses soar and verses lay tender hooks alongside drenching wet melodies. There’s a lot of world-beat influences as well as off-beat keyboard work throughout this album whose title was siphoned from renowned Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Is it as good as it gets for Coldplay? Probably not, but it delivers where “X+Y” faltered and this band doesn’t seem to stop impressing, even if the U2 references (iPod commercial, much?) are getting a bit tired. To summarize properly though, I leave you with:
David: “You know how I know you’re gay?”
Cal: “How?”
David: “You like Coldplay.”
While I would agree with the majority of so-called “hardcore” fans of Radiohead that this was a ploy by Capitol Records to squeeze out their last album for contractual reasons (gee, we’ve seen this happen before, haven’t we), for casual fans this is a great album to pick-up. With the hope of inducing rabid fandom, and after you listen to hits like “Creep”, “Karma Police”, “Paranoid Android”, “The National Anthem”, “Knives Out”, and “I Might Be Wrong” how couldn’t you be subject to that ear-riddled disease, I think that the “hardcore fans” should unite. After uniting like some quasi convention at the U.N., they should announce in unison, “yes we’d prefer to have the pop kiddies listening to Radiohead than spend another millisecond considering who to vote for on American Idol or which Cyrus was better, Billy Ray or his multi-millionaire underage daughter better known as Hannah Montana”. If you can’t find yourself on the right side of that argument, than you’re so ‘emo’ and ‘underground’ that even your mom will puke at your very sight and Scott Tenorman clearly must die.
Electro-pop continues its insane drive with reckless abandon towards the top of the charts. New players in the market are oddly monikered Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head. Melodic dance rock anthems emanate from “Glistening Pleasure” with undeniable catchy hooks and dudical synth bass. While these kids aged 18 to 20 years of age didn’t exactly grow up listening to the beginnings of electro and New Wave back in the Reagan era, you can hear the obvious influences. Energetic and fashionably late, Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head will cut into the fanbase of groups like Go Team and Le Tigre. Between the bubblegum pop hooks, the intrinsically performed synth stabs, and pulsating beats you have a signature sound that will earworm its way into your musical psyche. Gnarly.