Lannie Flowers: Flavor Of The Month

Power pop guitarist and singer Lannie Flowers started sharing free downloads of singles in 2019. These were tracks that would not fit on his Home album, but he wanted them out in the world. The series was dubbed March To Home and it did not take long for people to ask him if there would be an album to collect them all. During the pandemic Flowers decided to remix the tracks, in order to get the sound right for at home listening, in stead of the more punchy sound of the originals - those were fine for car radio and run-of-the-mill earbuds. Exhibit A: the new mix of the orchestral psych-pop extravaganza About You blows the original mix out of the water.

It was time consuming task, but now Flavor Of The Month is here and it was well worth the wait. The songs are allowed to breathe like they did in the 70s, whether is it the mostly acoustic Let It Go - the song that got the whole remix thing started - or the full-blown, sunny side up approach in Summer Blue, that will strike a chord with fans of The Foreign Films. Flowers can rock out in the title track Flavor Of The Month, and make his guitar howl and stutter in Day Glow All Night. Since all tracks were originally released as singles, there is no sign of filler. It is an album with 14 A+ A-sides.

Big Stir Magazine Issue 6: "Is This Power Pop?" special

The folks of Californian label Big Stir Records try to come up with a definition for the music their are releasing in the new issue of Big Stir Magazine. "Is This Power Pop?" was curated by guest editors John M. Borack and S.W. Lauden. If anything they have set out to broaden the scope. Kate Sullivan makes a case for including ELO:

I get the argument that ELO belongs on the power pop spectrum. In the early eighties, they got kinda power poppy— like “Hold On Tight” and “Rock ’n’ Roll Is King.” Lynne started losing the strings, going more rockabilly, developing the sound that became his signature as a producer for George Harrison, Tom Petty, et al. It’s the sound you hear in the Traveling Wilburys. It roams a smaller musical landscape than classic- era ELO, and yeah, okay, you could call it power pop.

Big Stir Singles: The Fifth Wave

The idea behind the Digital Singles Series by the folks at Californian power pop label Big Stir Records was quite simple: every Friday a band from their roster or a like-minded boutique company catering to that niche (Kool Kat Musik, SpyderPop Records, Karma Frog Music and their partners at Futureman Records) releases two songs. After awhile those singles are rounded up for a CD with all the artists' A-sides, followed by the B-sides. The Fifth Wave is the latest edition and it's a jukebox chock full of goodies.

The GoAllTheWays get the party started with Silly Girl, a melodic pop song that has Summer written all over it. As a contrast Saturday Show by Mod Hippie is a mid-Sixties garage rocker. Power pop as a genre reached a peak in the Seventies and The Tor Guides connected all the dots in the correct order for Just A Smile, a song on a par with Big Star and Badfinger. English It's Karma It's Cool's neo-psych song Wooden Buddha brings well-crafted eccentricity to the table. The Armoires, the band fronted by label owners Christina Bulbenko and Rex Broome, make fun of themselves with the violin driven folk rocker Pushing Forty.