PERMANENT WAVES #3

Gon’ use my style, gon’ use my sidestep!

Welcome, or welcome back, to PERMANENT WAVES, a chronological journey through and beyond the power pop of the year 1980.

Okay, alright, I see you 1980! After a slow start last week (and the week prior, though that gets a pass for not being a full 7 days), January is heating up considerably. I’ve got a nice even ten albums on the slate for you tonight, including a couple doozies— You know ‘em, or at least know of ‘em, you had BETTER love ‘em! Let’s mindset.

Numbers - Add Up

First up, we’ve got a charming slice of orthodox power pop straight from the mean streets of Toronto, Canada. Add Up proudly foregrounds its mid-60s mod/beat influences, touching them up for the current year with only the politest tinges of Knack-style nervous new wave. It’s undeniably an album of modest talents and modest ambitions, and it’s all the more lovable for it. There’s not one whit of originality to be found here, but Numbers succeeds nonetheless on the sheer sparkle and enthusiasm of their melodies. The lead guitarist comes up with all manner of interesting bits of noodling business to enhance the harmonized vocal attack, and the rhythm section stays brisk and lively at all times. Charged-up opener “Sideways Elevator” rules ass, “Won’t You Call” is one of the most spot-on Beatles pastiches I’ve ever heard, and “Bits and Pieces” is so frighteningly earwormy that I’d probably learn to hate it if it had been an actual hit. Small mercies all around— What else is orthodox power pop good for, eh?

Verdict: NICE

Sylvain Sylvain - Sylvain Sylvain

There are a lot of backhanded compliments to give a guy like Sylvain Sylvain, already famous(?) to the world as “The guitarist from the New York Dolls who isn’t Johnny Thunders”, but really, I mean it, his solo debut passes the time pleasantly enough that I don’t regret the time I spent with it one bit. Sure, it blows its load early with opening duo “Teenage News” and “What’s That Got to Do with Rock ‘n’ Roll?”, both of which are better Dolls songs than half of Too Much Too Soon, but even once it’s firmly devolved into, in my girlfriend’s words, “background noise”, it still moves along at a nice clip and, well, a good first impression forgives a lot, doesn’t it? It’s largely unspecial and inoffensive; not his fault he doesn’t have the pipes to make it anything more.

Verdict: FINE

Greg Kihn Band - Glass House Rock

I do not care one little bit for mister Gregory Kihn or his band, no siree bob. I find his pseudo-rockabilly power pop sound insipid, his lyricism witless, the cover of his second album highly offensive, and his incessant punning of his own surname gratingly cutesy-poo. Credit where it’s due, though, his previous album With the Naked Eye featured the first worthwhile lyric I’ve heard from the guy (I’m beside myself / but I wanna be next to you, d’aww). Glass House Rock has a good one, too: “Small Change” is the exact kind of sad-bastard power pop mindset that only a true-blue mercenary hack can make sing. The power in my heart no longer gets me by, you say? What can ya get with small change, indeed… The rest of the album is, in typical Kihn fashion, tedious and forgettable, though “Anna Belle Lee” does leave a slightly sour taste after a few listens for attaching such a bitter breakup song to a real, specific name, and “The Only Dance There Is” is about the least danceable song ever performed by human hands.

Verdict: SKIP

Wipers - Is This Real?

Here in 1980, enough punk rockers have attempted to make their mark that these Portlandians have surely asked themselves what sets their take on the genre apart in such a crowded field. To my ears at least, they distinguish themselves by being even MORE terse and tightly-wound than your average punks, and by a well-matched sense of sonic minimalism— hell, maybe brutalism’s the word. I do hear room for improvement, especially on ugly, tuneless tantrums such as “Potential Suicide”, but I also hear a keen ear for sound design in the claustrophobia-inducing distorted guitar tones, and a hookiness sneakily masquerading as repetitiveness. For a prime example, just take a gander at “D-7”, a four-minute rocker that manages to feel like ten and, incredibly, also does not drag in the SLIGHTEST. It slows up, it speeds down, the singer gets abducted by extraterrestrials, the whole kit ‘n’ caboodle. Great stuff, tough as nails, full of angst and alienation just like punk oughta be.

Verdict: NICE

999 - The Biggest Prize in Sport

Dial nine nine nine if ya really want the truth! Everybody’s sixth-or-seventh-favorite London punk also-rans are BACK with a third album of songs that can’t quite match the high energy of “High Energy Plan”, the closer on their last one. The title track gets pretty close though, booking along like a proper Undertones or Adverts tune and everything! “Boys in the Gang” is nice enough too, with its football hooligan shoutalong hook, and “Fun Thing” is, uh, just that. As for the remaining nine (nine nine)… ehh, I really want to root for these guys harder than I actually do. Like Sylvain, they’re pleasant enough to be worth their salt, but they simply do not have the sauce to consistently perk my ears up and get my head bobbing.

Verdict: FINE

Japan - Quiet Life

The big winner of the week! On the third album from these premier new romantics, David Sylvian and co. pivot into dissociated, ethereal, hyper-modern electronic pop, and somehow manage to make it even sexier than the funky glam rock of their first two albums. The frigid, hopeless ballads like “Despair” and “The Other Side of Life” are damn effective, mostly thanks to Sylvian’s aloof vibrato, but the more upbeat groovers are about the most addictive thing I’ve heard so far this year. The synth-soaked title track is the hit across the pond, and it deserves it. For my money, “Fall in Love With Me” is even gold-ier radio gold; I’ve had that bassline rattling around my head nonstop for days now, and I don’t want it to ever leave. Other highlights include the simmering “In Vogue” (also bestowed with an insanely infectious Mick Karn bass groove), the needling guitar leads of “Halloween”, and their cover of The Velvet Underground & Nico’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties”, which I prefer to the original— and that’s no knock on Nico.

Verdict: ZAMN

Lene Lovich - Flex

Sorry to the fans: I ran out of time this week to do my homework and listen to Lene Lovich’s lauded debut Stateless, but I daresay a couple spins of its sequel Flex gave me a firm enough handle on her Whole Deal. It’s a Sparks album, and a pretty good one at that! Any fan of the Mael bros will instantly feel at home here amidst the jittery, jumpy rhythms, busy keyboards, and shrill, theatrical singing— but, then again, they may just as well be put off by the lack of seething spitefulness and crippling sexual neurosis. See, Lovich isn’t weirding up her pop as a deliberate fuck-you to the smooth-brained sheeple lapping up AOR doggerel, she’s just an actual weirdo. Maybe too much of a weirdo for a square power pop normie such as myself— but then again, maybe her earnesty and manic zeal is just the ticket to win me over! I can’t help admiring how much Lovich throws herself into the performances here, it almost reminds me of prime Yoko Ono. I do wish there was less reggae here, but hell, a track like “Monkey Talk” is kinda too ridiculous to actually hate, and the sucker’s catchy too. Mindset of the week: A driver of a flesh machine, is what you really are / A-you can’t stop a rebel just by smashing up his car / We can’t kill we, we can’t kill we

Verdict: NICE

Wishbone Ash - Just Testing

In Wishbone Ash’s defense, even their fans don’t seem especially hot on this one, and I actually only gave it one and a half listens, a whole half a listen less than my usual bare-minimum of two— not exactly giving them the fairest shake here, in other words. In my defense, there were nine albums from this week I wanted to listen to more (including a pretty bad one!), and when I threw on Argus right afterwards (supposedly this band’s magnum opus) I could barely tell the difference. A graceless slab of lumpen buck-chasin’ truck rock, a whoooole lot of yesteryear’s guitar heroics and nothing at all to hang ‘em on. Like Skynyrd without the southern charm, or Sabbath without the existential dread.

Verdict: SKIP

John Foxx - Metamatic

Now here’s a distinctly grimmer, more dystopian take on synth-pop than Japan’s: Metamatic sounds downright robotic for most of its runtime, all theremins and calculated computer bleeps and tinny drum machines with no swing at ALL. Sounds the way posters for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis look. I can’t really say I “enjoy” this album. Much like Kraftwerk, who John Foxx clearly idolizes, he’s often a few shades too enamored with the sleek efficiency of a machine to really sell the horror of it all, and besides, it’s just so stiff. It’s certainly well-crafted, though, and even as most of the songs don’t do a helluva lot as songs, per se, the full-album experience has more than enough flourishes to keep the creepy atmospheres from getting too dull. Sorry to say, David Sylvian has officially spoiled me for this genre— gimme some damn sax and violins!

Verdict: FINE

Pretenders - Pretenders

We finish off Week 3 with our marquee album, the hotly-anticipated debut from the band behind the wonderful hit single “Brass in Pocket”! Fun fact, power pop uber-maven Nick Lowe almost produced this, but backed out after a few demos and the “Stop Your Sobbing” single, saying the band was “not going anywhere”. Can’t you just imagine the biopic casting him as a sneering, pretentious hipster, fucking over plucky underdog upstart Chrissie Hynde? Well, tough luck: in reality, Lowe and Hynde seem to have always been on good terms, and Lowe later remarked of the Pretenders’ success, “shows what I knew”. I think the simple key to this anecdote is that Lowe is an ideas guy at heart, and Hynde is, as the kids say, all vibes. Pretenders is an album that rides one hundred percent on slang and ‘tude, and, well, I’m kinda in Lowe’s corner— I like ideas, and they’re a skosh thin on the ground here. It’s a great time whenever the band gets more jangly (see: the singles), and “The Wait” is a tight as hell punk number with good bass. I just wish her voice was a little more tuneful, and that “Private Life” didn’t drag so badly.

Verdict: NICE