A collection of recent releases coldly calculated to appeal to the smooth pop afficianado – a demographic unto itself!

Baby In The Back Seat

Reverie Sound Revue – Super peppy and tightly synchronized femme-voxed pop that recalls the heyday of Stereolab or Ivy or any other mid-90’s outfit that placed precedence on reverbed vocals and bass guitar.

Divisible – Another tune with the balance strongly set towards the rhythm section, much crisper jazz inflection in the female vocals but still a heavy emphasis on tight song construction with a slice of stop start perched on the rim.

Olivia Broadfield – She has a few too many miles on the clock (only a few, mind you) to be aiming for the Vagrant teen demographic but that doesn’t stop this gauzy glittery girl, uh woman, from spending her time investigating love and angst for the locker-opening crowd

The Golden Bloom – An extremely strong scent of Maritime or Minus the Bear or any other post-Promise Ring emo project that found the pop portion of genre much more exciting than the sturm and drang can be found here.

We Were Promised Jetpacks – My enthusiasm for this post-punk outfit is quite reserved, not because I’m so over the early 80’s revival but because the mewling vocals hint at something much more modern, an inevitable intrusion I suppose (years ago, I might have known).

Madness – Here it is, the best song off the new Madness album, accept no substitute. It has the horns, the piano, the loping pace, the audible sneer underneath a weighty sigh. Perhaps I shouldn’t place heavy expectation that Madness ’09 = Madness ’83 but quite frankly if they don’t deliver on that unwritten promise then there’s no need for another Madness album.

Throw Me The Statue – While the band’s name shows up early in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the song is not quite a face-melter but it generates as much cool as heat like the electric fans in a professor’s office, functionally brilliant.

Summer Cats – Return with me to the early 90’s indiepop landscape, where appearing in a VW commercial was the pinnacle of success. There’s quite a bit of that DNA inherent in this tune, which hits with the wicked force of a great Velocity Girl song (admittedly there weren’t many, and they weren’t very forceful).