Category: Highly Recommended by Powerpopaholic

Thank goodness for Minibar. With The Jayhawks gone, it’s good to see another quality band continue to produce great alt-country pop music. Earlier albums like “Road Movies” and “Fly Below the Radar” established Minibar as a solid rock band with some country leanings. This albums is where the group matures and it’s a joy to listen to. Lead singer Simon Petty evokes Niel Young and Gary Louris with a vocal tenor and emotion that resonates similar to Eddie Vedder. The Byrds-styled guitar work from Tim Walker is also outstanding and would make Roger McGuinn proud. Great tunes here include “Things I left behind” and “Wide Open” with great melody and harmony similar to Del Amitri. “The Sight of You” has a nice West Coast styled flavor is my favorite song here. The mellow mood of the entire album seems to be just right, and until my Wilco album arrives later this month, I can get my fix here. Listen to some tracks on MySpace

Minibar Website | CD Baby | Not Lame

See the video to the song “Crime Scene Ribbon”

Out now is another amazing release from the Fire Apes. This self-titled CD is a 5 song ep that has a little sampling of what makes The Fire Apes an exemplary power pop band. Awesome guitar-driven songs with great melody and energy are what’s here. “Hey Kate” has all the elements of a top ten single. This ain’t your typical retro power pop, it has the spirit of early Kinks and Beatles without any trace of slavish homage. “If things don’t look so good today” is another excellent mid-tempo single as well. The sound of the band is also similar to Philly’s IKE (The John Faye band). This release has just had me salivating for more. I hope they release a new full length album soon, in the meantime you can get tracks from the last two release “A perfect Day for Bananafish” and “Central Park Carousel” on itunes. Check out the links below, The Fire Apes Site has the entire album streaming, so you can try before you buy.

The Fire Apes Site | Itunes | CDBaby | KoolKat Music

If there is anything in this world that can be labeled a “sure thing” it’s a Richard X. Heyman album. He consistently makes great albums and this new one is no exception. “Actual Sighs” is a revisit to an earlier time in Heyman’s career. Heyman’s debut from 1986 was called Actual Size. With this new recording, he re-works the original six songs and adds about 14 more in addition! Lots of great guitar are all over this album. Some of my favorites here are the Beatlesque “Mr. Murphy’s Son” and the rolling chourses on “In a Boxcar.” He also jumps out in a few new directions with “Twelve Bars and I still have the blues” an autobiographical bar-band styled blues rocker. “Written all over my face” is another ballad gem that has some killer hooks. And with twenty songs, you get lots killer tracks! The proof of Heyman’s greatness is that the tracks written in 1986 still sound awesome and not out of date. “Hoosier” is a great song in the RXH style that stands the test of time. If you haven’t listened to his stuff yet, this is a perfect time. It’s for sale at Not Lame and CD Baby and hear some on his myspace page!

I also got the opportunity to interview Richard in the new Powerpopaholic Interview Pages also is a link to other interviews as well, including The Shoes, Jeff Murphy, who I reviewed last week.