JANGLE ON!

Spring 2018

by Eric Sorensen

I apologize to Pop Geek Heaven readers for taking so long to write this first column of 2018.  Two recent inquiries about the status of the column have awakened me from my winter hibernation.   There are plenty of jangly artists, discs and tracks to share with fellow jangly music enthusiasts.  Recommendations include:

The self-titled Bennet Wilson Poole album – featuring Danny Wilson of Danny & the Champions, Robin Bennett of the Dreaming Spires and Tony Poole of Starry Eyed & Laughing. Baby Boomer folk-rock alert!  This album started creating buzz with the early release of a video version of the aching for airplay leadoff track “Soon Enough.” The trio performs the song while seated in a rail car (ala the Traveling Wilburys) and the song concludes with Poole reprising a riff from “Eight Miles High” on his Rickenbacker 12-string.  The trio’s songs warrant well-deserved comparisons with the Traveling Wilburys, Tom Petty, the Byrds and early Crosby, Stills & Nash. In fact, the group’s terrific cover versions of “Handle With Care” and “Find The Cost Of Freedom” are viewable on You Tube. The album features eleven tracks that showcase ballads and mid-tempo tunes, solo and harmony vocals, guitar unison … and Tony Poole’s chiming Rickenbacker.  Bennet Wilson Poole is a slam dunk for Top Ten honors in 2018!  Long may you run, Sir Tony, Sir Robin and Sir Danny!

Longwave – by Dropkick (if purchased through Kool Kat Musik, this latest release also includes a bonus disc with Balance The Light demo tracks).  Frontman Andrew Taylor and his bandmates continue to release top-notch albums with relative ease.  Standout jangly tracks include “Come Around,” “Is That Enough?” “It’s Still Raining,” “Out Of Time,” “All I Understand” and “Even When You’re Gone.”  Dropkick can be described as a pop-oriented blend between Teenage Fanclub and the Jayhawks. Longwave is the group’s 15th album – and all of the band’s back catalog deserve jangle pop fans’ attention!  

Pop Parade Volume 9 – another terrific sampler of contemporary power pop from the folks at Spain’s Indiana Records.  Chiming, jangly tracks include “Don’t Need, Don’t Care” by In Deed, “Small Talk, Wise Girls” by Javier De Torres and “Arthur” by Tommy Lorente.

Scarlet Fever – by Green Seagull.  Wow! This album is overflowing with pseudo-60s pop and psych-pop tunes.  Shimmering and ringing guitars will draw jangleholics’ attention to tracks like “Not Like You And Me,” “Scarlet,” “Shrubbery Road” and “Dream In Black And White.”  

Diamond Hands II – by Diamond Hands.  Another big Wow! This latest disc picks up where the band’s excellent 2017 debut left off.  Influences from the Beach Boys and the Byrds to Matthew Sweet and Kyle Vincent are present in the catchy pop songs on this disc.  Twelve-string guitars chime on tracks like “PCH,” “Seven Days A Week,” “LA Girl,” “Not Sorry” and “Now Or Never.”

Idle Chatter – Brian Jay Cline.  Veteran jangle’n’twang artist Cline shines on this – his most pop-oriented album – that was released on the Kool Kat Musik label.  I can hear Marshall Crenshaw references in many of the song, and chiming guitars put the frosting on the cake on songs like “I Get You,” “The Ballad Of Rosetta Stone,” “Never Saw It Coming” and “Pay Phone.”  

The most recent compilation by fellow 12-string enthusiast Ray Verno – Byrdsian 126 – showcases some excellent jangly tracks: “Fly Away (From Me)” by Fox Pass; more tracks by Roger McGuinn’s musician son Henry McGuinn; “Early Morning Rider” by the Quarter After; “Blue Norther’” by the Bordersnakes; “This Year” by the Beach Fossils; and “I Didn’t Know” by Bob Woodruff.

My last column mentioned Horst-Peter Schmidt’s 34-song anthology Biography.  I am pleased to report that Horst-Peter is already back in the studio working on the next Starbyrd album – tentatively titled Back In The USA.  The disc is a concept album that will contain eleven new songs, in chronological order, that focus on Horst-Peter’s 2016 trans-Atlantic voyage to Canada and the United States.

Other tracks worthy of jangleholic attention include: “alwayswhereyouare” and “Love Lost Love” by Kingdom of Mustang; the upbeat “Suddenly Sunshine” by Ramirez; “When You Come Around” by the Bottle Kids; “Try” by the Sunchymes; “High Flyer” by the Blank Pages; “Mirrors” by the Incredible Vickers Brothers; the very Byrdsian “Between Us Two/I Saw You” by the Lucille Furs;  “Leaving The Star Girl” (eerily reminiscent of Gene Clark’s pop-rock) and “The Girl Who Holds My Hand” by Daisy House; and “Freewheelin’” by the Last of the Easy Riders. So much music, so little time!

Three days ago, while shopping at a grocery store, I heard a catchy jangly tune on the store’s sound system.  I sought out a spot near one of the speakers and recognized the tune: “A Higher Place” by Tom Petty. The song was released in 1994, and it is another testament to Petty’s gift for penning timeless jangly pop songs.   Other “classic” tunes that are back on my Spring 2018 playlist include: “Space And Time” by the Fraternal Order Of The All (Andrew Gold’s multi-track homage to the Byrds); “Can’t Go Back” by the Sorrows; another great Tom Petty track – “Listen To Her Heart” and the derivative “Yesterday’s Streets” by Comanche Moon.

I am glad that Bruce Brodeen is still updating the Pop Geek Heaven site.  I will endeavor to share news of jangly pop music on a timelier basis in 2018.

Until next time, jangle on!  

ERIC