The General Store - Local Honey - 2002

Some of pop music's most classic and enduring records -- think Fleetwood Mac's Rumours or, more recently, Beck's Sea Change -- have been good old-fashioned, miserable breakup albums. Local Honey, the debut from the General Store, essentially the moniker for British singer/songwriter Tam Johnstone, fits this mold perfectly. Johnstone, whose father Davey was the longtime guitarist for Elton John, was born in 1970 and spent his childhood years immersed in the easygoing, laid-back vibe of Southern California singer/songwriters and country-tinged acts like the Eagles and Jackson Browne. Local Honey is his attempt to recreate this sound 30 years later -- and, here's the kicker -- it was recorded live to four-track in one prolific week following a bitter breakup. Ouch. But with Local Honey, Johnstone's misery is your joy, since at least his muse didn't leave him. The album is bursting with highlights, from wounded, Eagles-esque country-rock like "Letdown" to more shambolic country-rock like "Airport Breakfast" and soaring, almost Fleetwood Mac-styled pop like on "Coming Down" and gut-wrenching ballads like "Stay." Many will surely be divided on Johnstone's inclusion of a country-fried remake of the Thompson Twins' "Hold Me Now" (a nod to his teen years, perhaps?), but it manages to stand as the album's only lighthearted moment even though the song itself is actually really sad. Johnstone's vocals fly a bit too frequently into the "strained falsetto" range, but it's the lone drawback to this fine, gorgeous record, perfect for a rainy Sunday morning and a cup of coffee. -AMG



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The Honeydogs - Seen A Ghost - 1997

Like their pair of indie records, the Honeydogs' major-label debut, Seen a Ghost, is a charming collection of Beatlesque pop, demonstrating the group's knack for bright, catchy melodies and ringing guitars. Seen a Ghost is a solid, craftsmanlike collection of pop that doesn't offer any new thrills, but there are nevertheless thrills in the hooks and harmonies, making it a worthwhile choice for classicist pop aficionados. -AMG




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The Essex Green - The Long Goodbye - 2003

The Essex Green's second album continued in the Elephant 6 spirit of their debut: music highly reminiscent of pop-psychedelia of the last half of the 1960s, though not slavishly revivalist. It's the vibe of those times (and much more the pop than the psych) that informs the record, rather than the aping of specific formulas. At the same time, comparisons to those vintage days are going to be inevitable, and there's a little bit of a pastiche feel to the result, though it's brought off with upbeat wit. Certainly the arcing pop/rock harmonics of Badfinger and the Beach Boys are echoed in one of the better cuts, the opening "By the Sea." A Moe Tucker-type drum pattern helps make "The Late Great Cassiopia" sound a little like the Velvet Underground gone power pop, "Lazy May" has a little bit of Lee Hazlewood's oddball cowboy pop/rock, "Old Dominion" fuses late-'60s country-rock Byrds with the cheesy exotica of early-'60s Joe Meek productions, and "Berlin" sounds like it might have been cut after some intense listening to psych-folk-rockers Kaleidoscope's "Please." Indeed, there's a great deal of variety to the record, something that sets them apart from the vast majority of the bands that pay homage to the '60s, but also something that keeps them from developing a distinct identity. One way to do that might have been to give more emphasis to the lead vocals of Sasha Bell, whose confidently cheery style makes her by far the best singer in the group.-AMG



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Outrageous Cherry - Nothing's Gonna Cheer You Up - 1997

The third release by Outrageous Cherry, Nothing's Gonna Cheer You Up, shows the band filtering classic sounds of the past -- the jangle-rock of the Byrds, Big Star, and early R.E.M., and the dark minimalism of the Velvet Underground -- through '90s lo-fi technology. The band has a very talented songwriter in guitarist/singer (and producer) Matthew Smith -- if he was writing songs like the ones on N.G.C.Y.U. back in the '60s, he'd have several hits on his hands. The opening track, "I've Never Seen Your World," sets the tone for the rest of the album, and is a perfect example of what to expect from the other cuts (cleanly strummed guitars, echoey and distant vocals, primitive drumming a la V.U.'s Moe Tucker, etc.). Many of the tracks contain strong melodic hooks that create a comforting sense of familiarity, which is the ultimate sign of great songwriting. Other standout tracks include "Panavision 70," "Genevieve," and the title track. This is definitely Outrageous Cherry's best and most accomplished album yet, a guaranteed delight for fans of fuzzed-out, sticky-sweet '60s pop. -AMG



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Drink Squirt, help Habitat for Humanity and see Girl Talk for FREE!

Girl Talk is playing an exclusive show at the Fox Theatre in Pomona on Friday, July 24 and the only way to get in is to bring bring empty Squirt products! The more Squirt you bring the better the opportunity to gain VIP access to a meet & greet with Girl Talk. All cans will be collected with proceeds donated to Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles.

WHERE/WHEN: Friday, July 24, 2009

Fox Theater – Pomona, CA

Door Time: 7pm

Age: 18 & Over

ADMISSION: Empty cans or bottles of Squirt

Admission is first-come-first-served basis, until capacity is reached

MORE: Visit www.squirtboomburst.com for more details!

ABOUT GT: Pittsburgh artist Gregg Gillis (aka Girl Talk) has scrupulously created music from samples for over eight years. His fourth album, Feed the Animals, continues his sonic evolution towards his party-infested live show. While his first album, Secret Diary (2002), was full of purposeful glitches and noise, his subsequent albums, Unstoppable (2004) and the groundbreaking Night Ripper (2006), moved closer and closer towards dance-able mixes of varying genres, often including dozens of audio sources in a stream of juxtaposed hooks. With the fourth Girl Talk album on the Illegal Art label, Gillis steps even closer towards a creation that is centered on pop musicality rather than attention-deficit sample splicing.

The new album, Feed the Animals, collects the material that was developed over the last two years as part of Gillis' ever-changing live show. With hours of material in hand, it still took months to meticulously edit together the seamless album that combines 300+ samples in 50 minutes. Rather than taking mashups to an extreme, Girl Talk is more focused on the art of the sampling and developing new tracks that have their own character, and surpass the original elements.

The Four Corners - Say You're a Scream - 2001

Local Athens, GA, unit the Four Corners take up the mod flag in the biggest of fashions with their debut disc. Released on CD with both a stereo and mono (!!) mix, the opening chords of "Untitled Instrumental Theme #1" is what was once wonderfully feisty and immediate about the Kinks and the Jam. Period-perfect vocals by Tracey Hatch are backed up by big swatches of Farfisa organ and classic garage-worthy drumming by Ryan Lewis. On songs like "Miss Moneypenny" and "Secret Life," Neil Cleary's guitar work comes forward as the band's fuzz-faced secret weapon. With the combination of a few well-chosen covers (particularly the well-suited reworking of the Stooges' "No Fun"), and plenty of honest verve, the Four Corners follow in the fine tradition of other semi-psychedelic guitar combos of the period captured in either of Rhino Records' Nuggets sets.-AMG

(the band's debut on Kindercore, features each of it's 15 songs in both mono and stereo recordings. PPO has only posted the stereo recordings.)



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