New year, new music

Time to kick off 2020 with a new album, EP and single!

Rob Martinez-Maybe Miss America. Albuquerque pop-rocker Rob Martinez is back with his third album on Adam Marsland's Karma Frog label and though I enjoyed his first two (one of which I had in a year-end list) I just realized I hadn't featured him on the site. Time to remedy this with Maybe Miss America, his most assured work to date. For the unfamiliar, Martinez is a purveyor of adult pop in the vein of Neil Finn and Cliff Hillis, and on this one he opens with the 1-2 punch of the mid-period Beatles-influenced "The Letter" and the poptastic "Summer of Love", a deft mix of Merseyside and Brian Wilson. Other highlights include the groovy "All I Ever Wanted", which wouldn't be out of place on a Red Button album; the McCartneyesque ballad "Genevieve Chasteau"; and the jangly title track. Suddenly now there are 99 spots left on my top 100 of 2020.

Karma Frog



Brian Jay Cline-Songs for a Generation of X's EP. You just can't sleep on Brian Jay Cline. When I was compiling my year-end lists a couple of weeks ago I checked the link for his Critics Darling album I was including and discovered he had released another EP mid-year which I missed. And then on top of that, he released this new EP last week. So my advice is to bookmark his Bandcamp page and keep checking at least once a month. This latest EP again finds Cline doing what he does best - rootsy pop/rock a la Marshall Crenshaw and Bill Lloyd. "Two Left Feet" is a gem complete with harmonica, "Permanent Midnight" has an 80s feel to it with the rangy guitars and synths in the background and "High and Lonesome" is an earnest, building rocker. And Cline even tries out reggae with "Knockout" which succeeds in despite of itself. Keep 'em coming, Brian!

iTunes



Rooftop Screamers-"Our Lucky Night" featuring Keith Slettedahl. Former Throwback Suburbia drummer and songwriter Mike Collins' Rooftop Screamers project continues apace with new music featuring various frontmen from the indie power pop community, and his latest for 2020 is "Our Lucky Night" which finds Keith Slettedahl, former lead singer of The 88, on vocals. The song has a great winding melody and with Slettedahl on board it can easily pass for a lost 88 track.

Brian Jay Cline-Hang Ups (& singles)

I like to think I keep on top of the latest in new power pop, religiously checking the daily releases from CD Baby, Bandcamp and elsewhere, and poring over lists of what's added to Spotify, etc. But I just haven't been able to keep up with Brian Jay Cline this year. Having already released Writer's Block around the new year (even though according to Amazon and iTunes it wasn't released until August), Cline has put out a series of singles this year and another full-length. And while I was searching for links to include moments before beginning this post, I came across still another single he released last month of which I was unaware. Since Writer's Block kicked this all off, I'm viewing that title as either being extremely ironic or something Cline has overcome in a big way.

Anyway, it's Hang Ups that I want to concentrate on here, as Cline's rootsy pop a la Marshall Crenshaw, Walter Clevenger and Bill Lloyd is in fine form again. Hang Ups plugs in to the stresses of life in 2017, with "Monday" and "21st Century Nervous Breakdown" appreciating how hard it is to just get out of bed and start the week these days. But the real highlight here is "Wall (You're Gonna Pay for It)", which takes one of the 2016 election's hoariest cliches and applies it as a metaphor for dealing with an ex. It's not only one of Cline's most clever lyrics, it's one of his catchiest tunes in a deep catalog of catchy. Other standouts include the country shuffle of "Ride" and the upbeat-despite-its-title "Low Winter Sun".

But wait - there's more. I referred to his various singles, and they're all pretty good. There's the rocking "I Get You"; the (possibly) autobiographical "Latch Key Kid"; "The Ballad of Rosetta Stone"; "Never Saw it Coming" (which does channel Crenshaw); and the one I just stumbled upon, "She Idles Wild", which on first listen seems a moody departure that almost recalls Chris Isaak. And there's probably one more that come out while I was composing this post.

Hang Ups on iTunes

Two for Thursday, 6/18/15

Wade Jackson-Whiskey Alpha Delta Echo. Both a nod to Wilco's famous album as well as the spelling of the artist's first name in the phonetic alphabet, Whiskey Alpha Delta Echo is the second album from Aussie musician Wade Jackson, and it's quite simply one of 2015's best so far. The allusion in the title is apt, as the sound here is Big Star-meets-Wilco with its melodic minor-key rockers with a twinge of Americana (Austrliana?). After the moody opener "Dark Mirror" (which answers the question "What would The Smithereens sound like as a folk-rock band?"), we're treated to the jangly "Valentine's Day" and the trio of "Catch My Eye", "Coming Back" and "Carolina", all of which invoke #1 Record-era Big Star, with "Coming Back" perhaps my favorite track of the year. This album really hits the sweet spot between power pop and Americana, and my next step is checking out Jackson's back catalog.

iTunes



Brian Jay Cline-Trick Photography. Trad-rock-popper Brian Jay Cline is back with his first album since 2009's Nashville Tracks, and fans of Marshall Crenshaw, Walter Clevenger and Bill Lloyd are going to want to check this one out. Leadoff track "Zoo York City" is Cline's tribute to the Big Apple and sounds like a lost Willie Nile track, while "New Tattoo" has the pub-rock feel of a Nick Lowe or Graham Parker. Elsewhere tracks like "High Horse" and "Counterclockwise" are classic Cline and if you have any of his other albums in your collection, this one's a must-add. (Incidentally, the ReverbNation playlist embedded below includes Cline's entire catalog as the first ten songs are from Trick Photography and the rest are his other songs in alphabetical order)

iTunes

Free Electronic Press Kits from ReverbNation.com

CD of the Day, 7/21/09: Brian Jay Cline-Nashville Tracks

If you've only joined the power pop community in, say, the last four or five years, you may not have heard of Brian Jay Cline. Personally, I discovered him in early 2005 when his last record, One More for the Road, came out. After doing so, I had to seek out his back catalog. So it's quite possible you right now could be me circa 2005 if Nashville Tracks is your first exposure to this great roots-poppin' artist, while the rest of us are just grateful he's seen fit to release his first new disc in nearly five years.

If artists like Marshall Crenshaw, Walter Clevenger, Bill Lloyd and The Melroys are your bag, you'll wonder how you got by without Cline for all these years. The title of his latest is as unpretentious as his sound - these are tracks he laid down in Nashville, and if you had to guess without knowing the title, Nashville is where you'd probably think they were recorded. All the tracks here are good, but some are more equal than others. "Rave Up" finds him as a twangy Buddy Holly; "Talk of the Town" is right in that Lloyd/Crenshaw sweet spot; and "Lying at the Speed of Sound" has enough sass to make kindred spirit Terry Anderson proud. Elsewhere, "Last Chance" has a bit of a bluesy feel and one could easily picture someone like Robert Cray covering it, and "Road to Ruin" tackles our recessionary times.

The only quibble I have about the disc is that I can't share a Lala (or any other digital music provider) embed below; Cline is old school to the extent that his stuff isn't on iTunes or the other digital download places. You'll just have to check out the samples at Not Lame or his MySpace if you're unfamiliar with him.

(Meanwhile, things have really gotten to the point where it seems like every second or third record I'm writing about lately comes from Nashville or a Nashville artist; at the rate things are going, I might have to bifurcate my year-end list into Nashville and Non-Nashville in fairness to the rest of the world.)

Not Lame | Kool Kat | MySpace