Power Pop From Oz

I'm determined not to let the year end...

Without pointing you to Peter's Power Pop blog.

Just in the past week, Peter posted:

The great Beatles Xmas single that never was.

A Beatles cover (run through a Big Star filter).

A Christmas song done in the style of the Beatles.

An insanely genius Christmas song from the Wellingtons.

A seemingly timeless slice of power pop from a band called Thirsty Merc (and the one F-bomb makes me love the song even more).

And a couple of great songs from a band called Illicit Eve, which contains not one but two gorgeous blondes who look like every gorgeous blonde who ever tortured every hormonal teenage boy in high school:


(I'd be having nightmarish flashbacks about these two right now if the music weren't so good.)

I could babble more, but head over there and learn for yourself about Peter's Marshall Crenshaw fixation, his occasional series on "unexpected power poppers," and his devotion to the Beatles and the Wellingtons (even when it's not Christmas).

What more do you want? A freaking history of power pop in Australia? Well, he's got that too...

The Road out of London Runs Through Canada (and Sweden)

Ever wonder why London is so expensive?

Are you craving music that wears its love of power-pop on its sleeves? Looking for something catchy but substantial? Wondering what would happen if the Raspberries and Big Star had a baby in Toronto?

The answer to all these questions is Luke Jackson and his video for "Goodbye London" (my new summer 2009 favorite song and video). Goodbye dodgy Thai cuisine, indeed!

Apparently, London is so expensive because the people compete for scarce resources not just with millions of other humans, but also with every bit of graffiti on every last wall (link for Gmail subscribers):


Jackson, by the way, is a Canadian singer-songwriter with a fondness for Swedish music whose new album ...And Then Some was recorded in Sweden (in a vintage studio with all-analogue equipment to bring out the crunchy power-pop of the songs).

And while I've never lived in London, this song makes me want to move there for a while just so I can play this song over and over again right before I leave.

The animation -- a combination of stop-motion photography and traditional 2D drawings -- was done by Murray John, who also did this cool UK commercial for a newspaper CD giveaway.

Video Bonus: "Come Tomorrow": More great power-pop from Luke Jackson.


Text Bonus: I wish I'd written these two phrases about ...And Then Some: It's "so catchy it just might need a flu shot" and the album sounds "like Teenage Fanclub if they were lost in Scandinavia and developed a taste for string sections." But I didn't write them -- Paul Zimmerman of First Coast News (in Jacksonville, Florida of all places) did... and the entire review is worth checking out.

Update: My bad. Luke Jackson is actually originally British and relocated to Canada a few years ago.