Doleful Lions - "Ocean Stars," "The Contrarian," "The Sound of Cologne," "A Viper in Hiding," "Gulliver Diver"

Of all mentioned, my recommendations would be:

The Posies
Material Issue
Matthew Sweet

And if you don't have Nada Surf's Let Go, you simply must pick this up.

Seek out the "Crescent Honeymoon" EP by Communique!

i'll re-recomment Nick Lowe

Fuck yeah!

Good, good stuff. What do you have?

I've got Death Of A Minor TV Celebrity, Fun? and Space I'm In. Wish I had more.

fp

i'll second, third, or fourth Damone. Great power pop. Dawg, can you hook me up with some TSAR?

Finch - the Candyskins track is something I got from a compilation. But I've heard both those albums and enjoy them.

bort
np: Spiderman 2 with commentary...for some reason

Uh, those are 3 albums.

fp

ha
the first one and the third one i've heard.

bort

i'm not good at sub-genre classification. what's "power" pop? pop music with extra carbs?

dismemberment plan - emergency & i
brendan benson - one mississippi
jellyfish - spilt milk
drill team - hope and dream explosion
posies - frosting on the beater
matthew sweet - girlfriend

Power Pop is a cross between the crunching hard rock of the Who and the sweet melodicism of the Beatles and Beach Boys, with the ringing guitars of the Byrds thrown in for good measure. Although several bands of the early '70s — most notably the Raspberries, Big Star, and Badfinger — established the sound of power pop, it wasn't until the late '70s that a whole group of like-minded bands emerged. Most of these groups modeled themselves on the Raspberries (which isn't entirely surprising, since they were the only power-pop band of their era to have hit singles), or they went directly back to the source and based their sound on stacks of British Invasion records. What tied all of these bands together was their love of the three-minute pop single. Power-pop bands happened to emerge around the same time of punk, so they were swept along with the new wave because their brief, catchy songs fit into the post-punk aesthetic. Out of these bands, Cheap Trick, the Knack, the Romantics, and Dwight Twilley had the biggest hits, but the Shoes, the Records, the Nerves, and 20/20, among many others, became cult favorites. During the early '80s, power pop died away as a hip movement, and nearly all of the bands broke up. However, in the late '80s, a new breed of power pop began to form. The new bands, who were primarily influenced by Big Star, blended traditional power pop with alternative rock sensibilities and sounds; in the process, groups like Teenage Fanclub, Material Issue, and the Posies became critical and cult favorites. While these bands gained the attention of hip circles, many of the original power-pop groups began recording new material and releasing it on independent labels. In the early '90s, the Yellow Pills compilation series gathered together highlights from these re-activated power poppers, as well as new artists that worked in a traditional power-pop vein. Throughout the early and mid-'90s, this group of independent, grass-roots power-pop bands gained a small but dedicated cult following in the United States

-AMG

Like all genre classifications the definition mutates over time, and it really doesn't mean much anymore. For one thing, the word "pop" was originally meant to connote highly melodic rock epitomized by the Beatles. By the late '60s a new generation of bands came along, who loved the melodies of the Beatles and the Beach Boys but wished the fuckers would just rock a little harder (like their other heroes: the Stones). So power pop described these attempts at having it both ways: chirpy pop with an injection of volume and aggression.

Those early bands (Big Star, Badfinger, The Sidewinders, The Raspberries, The Wackers, the Nazz, The Move, etal) led directly into much of what became glam (The Sweet, Slade, T.Rex, Wizzard, etal) and then punk (Ramones, Buzzcocks, Stiff Little Fingers, The Undertones, the Vibrators, XTC, Generation X, etal) and then finally into the skinny tie power pop glut of the late '70s (the Knack, The A's, The Shoes, The Bongos, The Brains, The Records, The Beat, The Heats, The Catholic Girls, 20/20, The Yachts, and a million others). Since then, IMO, the term has become fairly meaningless, though far from extinct.

Some of my faves I haven't mentioned yet:

Artful Dodger
Cheap Trick
Tsar
Jon Brion (his solo album and The Grays Ro-Sham-Bo)
DM3
The Exploding Hearts
Gingersol
The Hoodoo Gurus
Mark Kleiner Power Trio
Ted Leo & the Pharmacists
Michel Pagliaro
The Sugarplastic
Sunset Valley
The Plimsouls
The Fabulous Poodles

forgot about Gingersol.

great band.

I have a few (of course)! All are ones I have not yet seen mentioned. Bands: The Shazam Teenage Fanclub Guided By Voices The Move (slightly nontrad.m true, but still both powerful and poppy enough to qualify, IMO.) Green Paper Airplane Pilots (obligitory, but still well-earned) Albums: Urge Overkill - Saturation Post Office - Fables In Slang Hüsker Dü - Flip Your Wig Songs: Stone Temple Pilots - "Days Of the Week" Tenpole Tudor - "Love and Food" Tenpole Tudor - "Three Bells In a Row" Hanson - "Where's the Love?" (shut up! it's a great song!) Pegboy - "Superstar" And oh, so many more. But I gotta stop somewhere.

I'd love to...but right now unemployment has got me in Financial Lockdown. No burning, trading, etc. Sorry.

BUT - the good news is that you can get their debut album really, really easily & CHEAP from Amazon/Half/eBay . Seriously - you can probably get it for under a buck ( before shipping ) . If you're a power pop fan I can't imagine you not at least liking this CD.

Power pop albums I enjoy regularly:
Ash - Free All Angels
Phantom Planet - The Guest
Ozma - Rock & Roll Pt. 3
Anything Ted Leo touches.

"Since U Been Gone" by Kelly Clarkson is sort of power pop.

This is great because I LOVE the Candyskins but almost consider them a guilty pleasure. I believe the reason why I think that way is because the only song that made it big was a cover song.

The only album you are missing Finch Platte is Sunday Morning Fever, which happens to be my favorite. In fact I liked it so much that I went out and bought all the single from this album and Death Of A Minor TV Celebrity. So now I have 13 singles but they are well worth it because they have some great B-Sides. I can put them up on slsk if anyone is interested.

What's this thread about again?

np: Candyskins – SMF (ironically Europe & Japan)

I second this! What a great, great album.

edit: Going back and now reading the rest of this post.

edit, edit: Great posts Bort and Radcliffe. Though I basically knew the history I don’t know a lot of those bands. I also knew this was up Jed’s, Bort’s and others ally.

Reason 1,567,681 why Obner is so great!

Frisbie is awesome.