Imagine you wanted to know everything about anything and that desire came in aural form. Then imagine that this thing was a musical niche which existed some time around fourty years ago, one which has yet to be revived in any meaningful way. If that thing is power pop, then boy, have you come to the right place.
Like many genres a little hard to draw a wall around, power pop – not to be confused with new wave, although they shared a lot of combined DNA – was it’s more straightforward rock n’ roll based cousin, easier to understand but harder to love.
I Wanna Be A Teen Again collects almost eighty acts from that period, an exercise with so much depth that you feel there can’t have been many crates left to dig. There are a smattering of to be famous names included (Although The Bangles, The Long Ryders and The Smithereens quickly escaped to various degrees of success). But in contrast the Ramones sound lifeless on My Kind of Girl and featuring scene progenitors The Knack but with any song other than My Sharona seems counter productive.
That makes for another seventy odd outfits all trying their hearts out and this for anybody who wants to really give this idea a go is where the gold is to be found. Not heard of Screen Test, Off Broadway or Jim Basnight & The Moberlys? Well now you shall.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 