Home > Music > Rock > Power Pop

Tweaked...

As with Fight Songs, the 1999 predecessor to Satellite Rides, the Old 97's are ringing a poppy bell. The cover art has a retro 1960s vibe, and the chiming guitars echo that sentiment. Is it 1960s Britpop? A tad, but singer Rhett Miller has a vocal palette that runs from 1980s new wave-leaning altern...

Out-of-State Plates is the byproduct of nearly a decade of Fountains of Wayne's stellar power-pop pursuits. The 28 performances (two other tracks are brief, snarky radio excerpts) culled together on this double-disc anthology may represent demos and previously unreleased leftovers from the band's th...

Long before Detroit became an adjective, the Romantics were delivering REAL rock 'n' roll with a fire and conviction that was downright palpable. Power pop gems like "That's What I Like About You" and "When I Look In Your Eyes" set a new standard for the genre, injecting it with an urgency and ...

The mid-70s belonged to a group of hopelessly plaid Scotsmen who named themselves after a northern Michigan resort town. With an affect on fans that resembled Beatlemania in terms of screaming, fainting, and pledges of undying love, the Bay City Rollers enjoyed a string of U.K. pop hits along with m...

Since hoisting the "insurgent country" banner in 1995, Chicago's Bloodshot Records has provided refuge for former punk rockers who embrace Hank Williams Sr. as patron saint and Lefty Frizzell as kindred spirit. Informed by equal measures of attitude, alcohol, and twang, this raucously vibrant birthd...

The rock `n' roll world lost a huge talent when drummer/singer/songwriter/guitarist Phil Seymour died of lymphoma at the unripe old age of 41 in 1993. Phil first made his mark in the Dwight Twilley band, then as a session man most notably on Tom Petty's American Girl. But it was on his solo work th...

After being dropped from A&M Records thanks to Girlfriend's rough edges, Matthew Sweet might hardly have expected great commercial success when another label brought the album out toward the end of 1991. But an alternative-welcome climate at rock radio stations, along with undeniably great songs and...

The second record from this Minneapolis trio firmly established them as one of the most promising hard-edged pop bands to surface in the 1990s. The leadoff track, the modern rock radio hit "Closing Time," neatly encapsulates everything that makes Semisonic special, from its irresistibly catchy choru...

Fountains of Wayne's second album is somewhat of a new thing under the sun: Pet Sounds for '90s Jersey high schoolers. Main-men Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood litter these songs with cultural references (Pink Floyd laser shows, tattoos, Puff Daddy, lavender Lexuses, "You Dropped a Bomb on Me...