Permanent Waves #20

Livin' in the past, it's a new generation!

Welcome, or welcome back, to Permanent Waves, a weekly-ish expedition into the power pop (and beyond!) of the year 1980.

Eight albums this week, and maybe I’m just stressed from other stuff but most of it was none too impressive— with one BIG exception! Who’s the lucky duck? Read on to find out. Let’s mindset.

Elton John - 21 at 33

The Bitch is BACK from a truly embarrassing ‘79 whiff at disco with an album of nominally less embarrassing over-produced yacht rock featuring boring Toto guitarist Steve Lukather, boring Captain & Tennille non-Captain Toni Tennille, and former boring Eagles Don Henley and the other one. I quite like the camaraderie and terse bounce of “Two Rooms At The End of the World”, and Tom Robinson does a fine job co-writing the lyrics of “Sartorial Eloquence” and “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again”, though the over-production still murders the latter. He sounds like he’s doing better coke than he was last year, and more of it, but still not enough to be much fun, and an Elton album without fun isn’t any good to anybody.

VERDICT: SKIP

Devo - Freedom of Choice

I like Devo, but I don’t love them, and even sort of think of loving Devo as some signifier of self-impressed wake up sheeple misanthropy. So, I hold ‘em at arms’ length, I suppose, but that’s partly because I do see the appeal, really: they make you feel clever for listening to them, and their angular synthesizers do a good job of winking at the camera. I also think that Duty Now For the Future is a lot better than Q: Are We Not Men?, and even though Freedom of Choice is more uneven than Duty, it reaffirms my hunch that Devo is a much better pop band than they are a punk band. “Whip It” is simply too weird and earworm-y to ignore, and you can really tell it was written by men with an autistic fixation on advertising jingles. “Girl U Want” might be their best song yet, almost as funny as “Wiggly World” and even catchier to compensate. And “Gates of Steel” is a very solid deep cut. They’re still at arms’ length, though, because they’re still self-impressed enough to fill half an album with half-written attempts to recreate the singles, and misanthropic enough to try and pass it off as political commentary.

VERDICT: FINE

Crack the Skye - White Music

I am not quite up to speed on vaguely prog-ish West Virginia rockers Crack the Skye (I guess they switched lead singers on the last album and now the original guy is back?), because I was really unimpressed by their 1975 self-titled debut. They seemed like a band with no real idea of who they wanted to be and no particular talents that might point them towards something interesting. Lucky for them, there are few demographics power pop mindset is better suited for, and on the oh so cleverly titled White Music, the proof is in the pudding! Bandleader John Palumbo’s sense of humor is still a bit prosaic by new wave standards, but that doesn’t mean he can’t get plenty of mileage out of emulating Remote Control-era Tubes on “Skin Deep”, or Introducing Sparks-era Sparks on “All American Boy”. “Hot Razors” and “Songs of Soviet Sons” are both still only a gallon of canned reverb away from being stuffy, sweaty Foreigner songs, though, and all “Techni Generation” proves is that Fee Waybill level charisma goes a long, long way towards selling Remote Control level cynicism. Points earned for pandering, regardless.

VERDICT: FINE

Bram Tchaikovsky - The Russians Are Coming

Former ugliest member of The Motors Pete “Bram Tchaikovsky” Bramall kicked off a solo career last year rather stylishly with Strange Man, Changed Man, a collection of slight, obvious power pop that leaned hard on a super-layered, dense mix of harmonized vocals upon beefy, glistening power chords upon harmonized vocals upon yet MORE harmonized vocals. It was kind of gimmicky, sure, but plenty of weaker gimmicks have birthed worthy careers, no? Sadly, Mr. Tchaikovsky’s second symphony finds him regressing into all of glam’s hoariest and basest tropes. With the addition of horns and Thin-Lizzy style twinned guitar leads the overall effect is smothering, impenetrable in the worst way. I can hear a fun summertime jam buried somewhere in here, especially on the comparatively restrained “Heartache”, but boy, is it ever buried.

VERDICT: SKIP

Paul McCartney - McCartney II

I resisted it as long as I could, but “Coming Up” finally won me over— or wore me down, whatever. Lucky thing for me it’s already a single, since only one other chune here, the treacly “Waterfalls”, achieves even a modicum of the pop resonance Macca’s had trademarked since ‘64. the rest ranges from adolescent and purposefully grating (headache synth pop “Temporary Secretary”, headache dub reggae “Darkroom”) to childish and purposelessly grating (“Frozen Jap” and “Bogey Music”, ‘nuff said). McCartney II is every bit as half-formed and first-draft as its 1970 predecessor, and its context can’t even give it the same parasocial boost because less than a year later, nobody really seems to miss Paul’s old band. I do miss them though, dammit, and we all still miss his old old band. Mindset of the week: You want a friend you can rely on / One who will never fade away / And if you’re searching for an answer / Stick around, I say

VERDICT: SKIP

Sorrows - Teenage Heartbreak

In 1975, Sorrows frontman Arthur Alexander was covering an obscure bit of Beatles prehistory called “Love of the Loved” for the B-side of his old band Poppee’s single on Bomp! Records. Now, I’m just a rank-and-file power pop lover, and I won’t presume to know better about the genre than a head honcho like Greg Shaw. But I’ll venture he’d agree with me that he’s always been an easy lay for anything vaguely merseybeat, and in the past five years Alexander has seemingly not learned to offer the music world much more than the same old whiff of Beatlemania that probably got him signed in the first place. I’d also venture Greg Shaw would agree with me that he could have invested in Teenage Heartbreak more effectively than Epic Records did: very cheap, tinny production sound on this thing, which is unfortunate since Alexander is such a mediocre vocalist. Small comfort that no songs of note have truly gone to waste.

VERDICT: SKIP

The Heats - Have An Idea

When I call something “orthodox power pop”, it means striving to stay as absolutely faithful to the sound of the British invasion circa 1965/1966 as possible. Seattle’s The Heats are as orthodox as power pop comes: to call them “pub rock” would imply an interest in the blues or rockabilly that isn’t anywhere to be heard here. Early on in this series I accused The Romantics of being talented “wasters” who lacked the ambition to meaningfully build on their influences. Have An Idea is a great example of what I mean by that: it’s more generous (at fourteen tracks in the same runtime as The Romantics’ eleven), funnier between the titular opener and closer “Let’s All Smoke”, and less emotionally distant (in particular the sharply-observed youthful angst of “Remember Me”, “Ordinary Girls”, and “Call Yourself A Man”, all too universal for a mindset of the week). And at least half of the melodies are quite simply unimpeachable. The Knack should be the ones opening for them.

VERDICT: ZAMN

Joan Jett - Joan Jett

There’s something that feels fundamentally prefab about Joan Jett— obviously, she literally got her start in a prefab rock band, roped into a shady manager’s plot to cash in on the alluring image of chix with guitarz. The harsh truth is that the industry hasn’t been good enough to Jett for her solo debut to show off much in the way of newfound creative freedom: Joan Jett has fewer Joan Jett songwriting credits than The Runaways’ 1977 commercial flop Waitin’ for the Night. This thing is stuffed with covers: Her “Wooly Bully” is stiffer and more self-conscious than Bad Manners’, her “Shout” and her “You Don’t Own Me” are paint-by-numbers, and her two (2) Gary Glitter covers are no less empty than the original articles. The even harsher truth is that the industry hasn’t been bad enough to Jett for her to get more than one great song out of her “disillusionment”. That one song really is damn great though, and the Roll-Ups are a worthy backing band throughout. If the name of the game is girl power, she looks like a real lightweight next to Polly Styrene or Wendy O. Williams, but I can’t just write her off: her taste for glam puts her closer to my wavelength than either. Here’s hoping her next album puts that taste to more inspired ends.

VERDICT: FINE