A personal note.

I know I only normally post 2-3 times a month, so this near one-month absence is not completely surprising, but I have not posted any reviews since then as shortly after my last post, my younger (and only) brother was suddenly hospitalized and barely a week later passed away. And no sooner did he pass than my family found ourselves squarely in the projected path of Hurricane Irma, forcing us to evacuate. Thankfully the brunt of Irma stayed to our east and the storm weakened spending more time over land than forecast, so my home came out unscathed. But we still lost power/cable/internet for most of last week and given the stress of all that's gone on, I haven't really been in the right head space to write about power pop these days.

But I'm getting there and there's been a lot of great new stuff that either came out just before or since, so I will be posting soon and am certainly not abandoning this blog. Thanks as always for reading, and thank you for your patience.

New playlist (and new look).

First of all, I have a new Spotify playlist over on the right. It's about half stuff I've reviewed here lately and half stuff I haven't, so of note from the latter are fine new singles from Reno Bo and Shake Some Action! as well as tracks from Kyf Brewer, Pop Cult, Matt Joe Gow and Kevin Devine, whose full-length albums I would recommend checking out.

And more obviously, I changed the template on the blog. Nothing fancy (one of Blogger's generic options), but I grew tired of the old look (as I'm sure you have), and now it looks a little less 2006 and a little more 2009 at least.

The "recently played" widget.

I don't know how many of you actually pay any attention to the last.fm "recently played" widget over to the right, but it actually has some use. It updates every few days (after I've sync my iPhone) and usually there will be several tracks from artists that I may never get around to writing about but are worth checking out. After all, if I didn't like their music in the first place, they'd never find their way into my iTunes collection so if you're on the prowl for even more new music, Google anyone who looks unfamiliar. Odds are their discs can be found at CD Baby, and if you decide to buy any of them and want to support this site, add "/from/absolutepowerpop" (without the quotes of course) to the end of the CD Baby address as I belong to their affiliate program.

And while I have the floor, Adrian Bourgeois has a new single out, "Time Can't Fly a Plane", which is just as catchy and melodic as his 2008 debut album. Hopefully this means a new full-length is in the offing.

Links: CD Baby | iTunes

Here's a live version:

The Top 100 coming soon.

Just a heads up for those looking that my Top 100 list should be up starting Thursday, probably in two chunks with 100-51 first and then 50-1 on Friday. I do reserve the right to shorten or lengthen it once I've gone back through the year's releases. The EP list will follow between Christmas and New Year's.

A note for those wondering: Greg Pope's dominance of these lists (#1 disc of 2008, #1 EP of 2009) will take a pause this year as his new disc came out just too late for 2010 purposes (last Monday) and will instead be considered for 2011.

Hiatus.

I've become extremely busy at work, with a lot of spillage into non 9-to-5 hours, and I anticipate being so for next week as well. Therefore, I highly doubt I'll be able to post any new reviews during this time, so I thank you all for your patience and readership and I'll be posting again as I soon as I get the time to again.

Twitter Recommendations.

I've decided to start using my Twitter feed to bring to your attention discs that I've liked (usually enough to put on my iPod) but don't anticipate getting around to reviewing on the site. I'll try to do one a day for now. So if you're not already doing so, follow me on Twitter (@AbPow), or if you'd prefer, view the feed on the widget over to the right.

New iMix at iTunes!

Freebie Friday!

Today would be a good day to subscribe to my Twitter feed, as I'm tweeting freebies from Amie Street, most of which I've reviewed in the past on this blog.

Of course as always with Amie Street, these albums may no longer be free by the time you get to them, so act fast.

Absolute Powerpop on the Kindle.

For those of you out there with a Kindle, you can now subscribe to Absolute Powerpop for the Kindle at the low monthly price of $1.99:



It comes with a 14-day free trial.

Lala embeds added.

Thanks to their becoming available on Lala subsequent to my original reviews, you can now listen to Valley Lodge's Semester at Sea and J.P. Cregan's Man Overboard in their entirety by scrolling down to the respective reviews below. A great way to spend the next hour and fifteen minutes or so.

Best of 2007 in one place.

In preparation for rolling out the 2008 lists, I noticed that I never consolidated all of the 2007 lists (which were posted in sections) in one place. I will use this post as well to point to the 2007 lists. Here are the links:

The Best of 2007, #1-5
The Best of 2007, #6-25
The Best of 2007, #26-50
The Best of 2007, #51-75
The Best of 2007, #76-100
The Best of 2007, #101-125

The top 10 EPs of 2007

The top songs of 2007

The 2008 top 125 has finally been compiled, as has the EP list. The EP list will go up first tomorrow, followed by top 125 in 5 chunks (actually 6 chunks over 5 days, as I'll give the top 5 a separate post like last year) from Friday through Tuesday.

Lala. (Updated)

Many of you may have noticed on my last couple of reviews I've added a "Listen at Lala" link at the end. For those who haven't heard, Lala.com has relaunched itself and in the process might be the most exciting thing in online music since eMusic and iTunes. Create a free account, and you can listen to any disc it has (most of the majors and a considerable amount of independent, CD Baby-type stuff) once in its entirety for free. After that, you can buy a stream of any track for 10 cents, which lets you listen to it online as many times as you want (You get 50 free permanent streams for signing up before you have to start spending a dime). Like the other services, you can still buy the mp3 for less than a dollar if you prefer.

The other cool aspect of it is that you can use it as a digital locker for your online music collection; you can download a small app that scans your music collection and either matches the tracks in their own database or uploads the tracks they don't have to their server so that you can listen to it all from any computer. They use an iTunes-like interface to manage this, and it's pretty neat. They're also on the verge of releasing a iPhone app that will let you stream your collection.

The big catch, though, is that it's available in the U.S. only at the present time. The upshot of it for this site is that any time I review a disc they have, you'll have the opportunity to listen to it one time all the way through for free, which is a big deal especially now that CD Baby has cut the samples on its site for new discs from 2 minutes to 29 seconds due to ASCAP/BMI licensing issues. CD Baby is still the best place to buy if you want the physical disc and/or to see the artist get paid, but Lala is now the best place to sample.

UPDATE: They have a "forecast" feature which allows you to select four songs that you can have anyone listen to, and if you look to the right, you'll see mine. I plan on featuring 4 songs that either strike my fancy at the moment and/or come from discs I recently reviewed.

Blogging update.

Been a bit swamped at work lately, and at home I've got 3 under-10 boys to watch myself this week, so I'm not quite getting as much done here as I'd like at the moment.

Or maybe I just should have announced that I was suspending the blog until we could get a bill passed solving the banking crisis.

Absolute Powerpop on Twitter!

Just what the world needs - a stream of consciousness peek into my head. Yes, I've joined the legions already on Twitter so that I can make 140-character-or-less pronouncements on anything that strikes my fancy at any given moment. If any of you care to look in, you can check it out here. Power pop and music will be only a part of what I blabber on about, look for sports, politics, movies, TV, and other stuff too. If any of my opinions offend, I guarantee your money back.

P.S.: Bruce @ Not Lame is on there.

Update.

Thanks for all the get well wishes out there - I'm just about recovered from what turned out to be bronchitis. I plan to have a review up tomorrow and get back to a normal routine. And in about a week or so, I should have the best of the 1st Quarter of 2008 up.

Sick day.

Sick as a dog right now (as well as my 3 kids), which is why there haven't been any new posts since Thursday. I'm hoping to get a new review up tomorrow. In the meantime, here is Fountains of Wayne's "Sick Day", set to scenes from The Office:

Where You Are From.

So where are you, the Absolute Powerpop reader, from? Of course I mean "you" collectively, not individually, as I'd like to think most of my readers are aware of their own surroundings.

Courtesy of the nifty pie chart below from SiteMeter, I see that unsurprisingly the lion's share of readers come from the USA, but coming in at a respectable #2 with over 15% is Spain. This too is not a big surprise, considering how well the power pop scene thrives there. I have no doubt that on a per capita basis Spain is the most power poppin' country in the world. After that, the final third is taken by mostly various European nations, but I couldn't help but notice a 1.0% share for Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (a/k/a Libya). Are you reading, David Bash? I think you have a new IPO location.

Last.fm (and Absolute Powerpop Radio) widget added

Over on the right, you'll notice a last.fm widget that shows the most recent tracks played in my iTunes. I don't normally listen to iTunes at the computer (although I'm doing so at the moment I type this, and perhaps this will inspire me to do more often), so it will usually only update when I sync my iPod every 2-3 days. But if nothing else it may point out a few more artists for you to check out - many of the tracks have a little play button next to them which will allow you to listen to them at last.fm.

UPDATE: I ponied up the $3 for a subscription, so now we have Absolute Powerpop Radio via last.fm on the site, too. My preliminary experience is that it's mostly the bigger name artists I have in my iTunes, but there were some other lesser-knowns in there.

SECOND UPDATE: Now that the radio has kicked in a while, I've noticed it's playing a lot more of the independent artists I've featured on this site rather than mostly bigger names, making it more truly Absolute Powerpop Radio.

The Absolute Powerpop Store.

I'm sure you've noticed the PayPal widget over on the right - I noticed one of these on Powerpopaholic's page and thought it might be a decent way to get rid of some CDs I have laying around. I just want to make it clear that these are CDs that I have purchased, NOT promos received from artists.

All disc prices are postpaid, and if you're interested in say, 3 or more, I can give you a discount - just email me. (Note: Due to the hassle factor of international shipping, I'm going to have to restrict sales to US addresses).

Year-End Lists Update.

I know many of you are looking forward to the top 100 of 2007 list, and although I don't have it finished yet, I do have the top 100 pretty much selected and grouped by 20s (i.e., 1-20, 21-40...81-100). I need to finalize the order, which I should do over the next few days. And in culling the top 100, my "honorable mention" category started getting a bit large in number, so actually it's going to be a top 125.

I also plan to unveil the list in a different manner this year. First off, I will start with the top 10 EP list instead of doing it after the top 100, er 125. Look for that list by the weekend. And more significantly, I'm going to unveil the top 125 over a period of days instead of all at once, probably in increments of 25 over next Monday-Friday.

In the bigger picture, the one overarching theme I noticed this year is that fewer discs seemed to jump out at me as truly, truly great than did so last year. For example, when I look back at last year's list, I see Bryan Estepa's All The Bells and Whistles at #28; if it had been a 2007 release, it'd probably be close to cracking the top 10. On the other hand, the number of very good discs seemed to be higher this year; whereas last year, I felt like I struggled to fill the top 100, as noted above I'll be listing 125 this year. Whether this is a reflection of my own listening (the more I hear, the more jaded I get) or is really a reflection of that subjective thing we call "quality" is an open question.

(And yes, I will also be compiling a "best songs" list, although that will likely wait until between Christmas and New Year's).