5. Pale Hollow-Pale Hollow. The best classic rock/British pop disc of the year, and it's the product of a guy from Cleveland, Michael Allen. With touchstones from Neil Young to The Kinks & solo Ray Davies to Peter Bruntnell to Al Stewart to Oasis, and a bunch of great songs to do those influences proud, Allen has made a disc that will instantly appeal to anyone who grew up in the 60s or 70s.
4. Cliff Hillis-The Long Now. With the best "pure pop" album of the year, Hillis has reached that state of musical zen where it all seems so effortless. I described him in the original review as the "golden mean of power pop" and there's something for everyone here, whether your tastes run to the crunchier or softer sides of the genre. Plus, "Elevator" and "Northern Lights" are two of the catchiest tracks of the year.
3. Adrian Whitehead-One Small Stepping Man. It's always nice to be pleasantly surprised. Last spring, I was excited to be getting the new Bryan Estepa disc from Popboomerang (with justification as it ended up #10), and the label threw in a couple of other discs I wasn't expecting, one of which was this one. And what a breath of fresh air it was. Hands down the best Beatlesque disc of 08, Whitehead serves up one chewy pop confection after another.
2. Clint Sutton-Clint Sutton. Back in April when I unveiled an early-year best-of, I had this disc at #1 and it was a semi-controversial pick. "All the songs sound the same", "not enough melodic variety", etc. were among the criticisms. To which I respond: if you do one thing and do it extremely well, you don't need to be a virtuoso. Sutton has stripped power pop down to its most basic elements: loud, crunchy guitars and sweet melodies. No bells and whistles, no string-laden ballads, no baroque flourishes and no spoken-word interludes. Just 11 tracks of kick-ass melodic rock that despite their relative lack of variance, still sound fresh to me every time I go back and listen to them.And at #1.................
1. Greg Pope-Popmonster. I knew Greg Pope was a talent in his days fronting Edmund's Crown, but given a chance to fly solo he really outdid himself. A true one-man effort (Pope played all the instruments, wrote all the songs, and did everything except design the tres cool album cover - maybe the best of the year in that field as well), Popmonster is kind of the anti-Clint Sutton: Pope jumps around from indie rock to power pop to classic rock to Americana and pulls all of these styles in a uniformly excellent manner. Clocking in at 16 tracks, it runs the risk of solo self-indulgence, but never crosses that line or wears out its welcome. While some albums demand to be played in sequence as a cohesive whole, Popmonster is like a jukebox filled with your favorite songs and is perfect for shuffling on an iPod.
6 comments:
Sorry can't see how No 2 & 3 got into the top 100.
My guess you have developed an aversion to the XTC influenced power pop bands, thus a low ranking for both Pugwash and Josh Fix.
I've been campaigning against the term 'Powerpop' for nearly ten years now!! I put the phrase on my debut album and have regretted it ever since. So 24 is excellent for me, seeing as though I don't think my music is in anyway 'powerpop'!! I love the work that's put in here, it's a labour of love and much appreciated but it's about the songs not the sonics.
Here's to a song-filled 2009!!
Thomas Walsh.xx
The Greg Pope is great. I listen to it all the time. I've got some catching up to do with the others, even though I read here all the time. Thanks for all the great reviews over the year.
Playing Nashville is a GREAT song and one I could see on an album considered to be the best. The PopMonster cover is awesome also.
It's easy to listen and say, this album isn't as good as this one... everything I've listened to over the past few days has been really good. Thanks for all of your hard work. As a member of the Favorites I'm proud to have been anywhere on the list, much less number 15.
Thanks,
Bryan
the favorites
Clint Sutton looks like a Geico caveman.
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