Category: Album Preview

Freebies: The Legal Matters and The Ice Cream Man

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The Legal Matters “An Intro”
The Legal Matters are a power pop supergroup based out of Detroit, Mi. Andy Reed, Chris Richards and Keith Klingensmith joined forces in 2014 to make their awesome debut. Mixing big guitars with big harmonies, their recorded output has one foot in the classic pop era of the 60’s and 70’s (Beatles, Beach Boys, Nilsson, Big Star) and one foot with the current era of classic pop (Nada Surf, The Autumn Defense.) This EP features a new song, “Anything”, from the upcoming Omnivore Recordings release Conrad, along with a brand new and unreleased cover of the Teenage Fanclub classic “Don’t Look Back.” Rounding it off are 2 songs from the Legal Matters self-titled debut.

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Assorted Artists “Power Popsicle Brain Freeze” 

Wayne Lundqvist Ford (Ice Cream Man Power Pop) delivers a boatload of music in this new compilation that he personally selected. It’s a massive collection of 139 tracks that’s a quick update to the state of power pop artistry today. Surely you find a great mix tape from all these riches.

Get the FREE download at Futureman Records

 

Hey, Hey It’s The Monkees Again!

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The new Monkees album Good Times! is due in stores May 27th and it celebrates the group’s 50th anniversary. Shortly after the death of Davy Jones in 2012, Mike Nesmith played a series of tours with surviving members Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork in honor of their fallen comrade. He contributes a song here and plays guitar on the new LP.

But the bigger news is that a bunch of closet Monkee fans are making big contributions to the album. “She Makes Me Laugh,” was written by Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo and other songs have been written by Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard,  XTC’s Andy Partridge, as well as Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller. There are also tunes written by Neil Diamond and Carole King in the 1960s that the group never got around to releasing. The album was produced by Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne. If you ask me this is a classic case of power pop giants given an excuse to lovingly look back at that past pop era we love.

Album Preview: The Posies “Solid States”

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The Posies 8th album “Solid States” is due out May 2o – its been 6 years since we’ve reviewed “Blood Candy.”

The Seattle-rooted outfit, led by Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow, have one of the most compelling catalogues in modern pop, and have been inducted into the first class of The Power Pop Hall of Fame. But there have been a lot of changes in the Posies world. “We’ve had two bandmates die, a divorce and remarriage, a transoceanic move … There’s been good things and difficult things, but nothing is in the same place for us.  So it makes sense that this record would sound different from its predecessors.” said Auer.

It has been hinted at that the artists will grow their sound to include “laptop elements” and even though the Posies retain their legendary melodic abilities, the band feels it’s their duty to take risks and explore. Listen to this FREE advance track “Squirrel vs. Snake”

Upcoming projects: Tom Wilson Documentary and Cheap Trick

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Screen Shot 2016-02-29 at 5.27.00 PMMarshall Crenshaw has created a Kickstarter project to remember legendary record producer Tom Wilson. It was Tom Wilson who signed The Velvet Underground to Verve/MGM Records and produced their first two albums, signed Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention to Verve/MGM Records and produced their first three albums, became Bob Dylan’s record producer in 1962 (halfway through “The Freewheeling Bob Dylan” album), continuing through 1965 and “Like a Rolling Stone” (the period during which Dylan gradually “went electric”), produced the first album by then-acoustic Folk duo Simon and Garfunkel (“Wednesday Morning, 3 AM”), then seriously launched their career by unilaterally deciding to add electric instruments to “The Sound of Silence” (Legendary record producer John Simon told me that he thought that Wilson did it as an “intellectual exercise”).

Wilson “discovered” Sun Ra and The Arkestra, producing and releasing their first two albums on Transition Records, a label that Wilson established right after graduating Cum Laude from Harvard in 1955. Wilson “discovered” Cecil Taylor and produced his first album, “Jazz Advance”, for the Transition label. These are just the bullet points of Wilson’s artistic legacy; to put it in a nutshell, he was a visionary, someone that moved the Culture, saw the future and set about helping to create it, was one of the architects of Popular Music as we’ve known it since the 1960s and still know it today… And up until just recently he was pretty much a forgotten figure. Visit his website: www.producertomwilson.com to learn more, but even more important check out the Kickstarter page and help fund this project!

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A10SP7LXMXL._SL1500_-1-744x744Cheap Trick is looking forward to the release of the new album Bang, Zoom, Crazy…Hello on April 1st. Check out the extras on PledgeMusic. If you don’t already have it, you can get the new song “No Direction Home” for FREE just visit the Cheap Trick landing page.