Adrian Whitehead / Dave Sheinin

Adrian Whitehead-Nerd from the Suburbs. I got heavily into indie power pop in the mid-2000s and started this blog shortly thereafter, so a lot of the discs I grew to love in those first few years still stand out in my memory. And when I'm reminded of one of those albums and then realize the artist hasn't released anything new since then I figure to myself that he or she has moved on to other, likely better-paying pursuits and I'm just thankful for the music they did make. So it was truly a "whoa" moment when I noticed that Adrian Whitehead, who had my #3 album of 2008 with One Small Stepping Man, has released his first new album in ten years. Nerd from the Suburbs isn't quite a rerun of the debut, which was heavily Beatlesque. Instead, it's more like Elliott Smith when Smith was at his Beatlesque. "Folie a Deux" (French for "shared delusion" and the title of a great X-Files episode) is a wonderful album-opener and the prime example of this slight shift in sound, driven by acoustic guitar but with an electric solo all in service of a pretty melody. The E.Smith comparison also applies to the darker yet baroque combo of "Blaming the Snake" and "Sigmund Freud" both of which feature trumpet, tuba and trombone. Other standouts include the piano ballad "Shades of Grey", the gloriously melodic "Gilded Cage", and the title track which isn't the autobiography its title implies but an honest plea for love and friendship. Unlike some artists who sound the same even after a decade+ absence, Whitehead has clearly evolved, going from the boyish Beatle-pop of the debut to a richer, more mature set of songs both lyrically and musically.

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Dave Sheinin-First Thing Tomorrow. In the Adrian Whitehead review above, I spoke of musicians moving on to other pursuits but here's a case of someone more prominent in another field making music. Dave Sheinin is the national baseball writer for the Washington Post (you can read his articles here), and his debut album is one of 2018's best to date. Sheinin gets help from the Myracle Brah's Andy Bopp among others, but these are his songs and they're uniformly good. With its staccato guitars and catchy melody, "Lies" kicks things off with a definite 70s AM radio vibe while "Oh Amelia" boasts a jangly, chiming riff at its center. "Little California" sound as sun-kissed as its title and features backing vocals from Bopp, and "City You Left Behind" sounds like a lost Posies track. Throw in a couple of fine piano ballads ("A Warm February" and "You Love the Sunrise") and First Thing Tomorrow is the rare debut album that sounds like the work of a long-time professional. And it's easily the best album from a sportswriter since J.P. Cregan's Man Overboard.

P.S. The album art looks like it was inspired by the opening credits of The Leftovers, which earns it bonus points in my book.

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Popboomerang on Bandcamp - Freebies Galore!

How does 44 free mp3s from one of the world's greatest power pop labels sound? That's what you can get by visiting Popboomerang's new Bandcamp page. They have two samplers up, one with 13 tracks and the other with 31, featuring artists many of you know and love, along with many others worth checking out. From Bryan Estepa to Russell Crawford to Adrian Whitehead to Grand Atlantic to The Wellingtons (and many more), you can't go wrong.

News from Down Under.

Lots of interesting power pop developments coming out of Australia lately, and here are the highlights:

* Michael Carpenter. If the group of artists we feature on this site who continually work together on different projects can be called the Australian Power Pop Mafia, then Michael Carpenter is The Godfather. And Don MC is back with a couple of projects.

First up is the O'Neders, a gathering of Carpenter and like-minded power poppers who came together to record a live album of power pop covers from contemporary artists such as Sloan, Fountains of Wayne, Teenage Fanclub, Jellyfish, Matthew Sweet as well as classics from The Beatles, Big Star, The Byrds and The Who among others. It's a real hoot and a real treat and you can listen and buy the whole shebang at Bandcamp. Titled That Thing We Done, it's a real wonder. (Unfortunately the CDR version is sold out, so you'll have to digital on this one).

MC is also hard at work on his ultimate Cuban Heels project. You may recall the pair of EPs he's put out in the last couple of years with this crew, and now it's all coming together with The Incomplete Cuban Heels, a collection of the 2 EPs plus a bunch of new tracks. Like other artists these days, he's offering a "buy-in" of sorts to help finance the project and has two levels of support you can give with plenty of goodies available for each. Get all the details at his site.

* The Sunshine Ponies. You probably haven't heard of the band name, but I'm sure you're familiar with the players. This is the aforementioned Aussie Power Pop Mafia in its full glory, as Popboomerang honchos Scott Thurling and Sarah Halligan have called in the gang to record an album set to their love poetry, and in addition to Mr. Carpenter, AbPow faves like Bryan Estepa, Adrian Whitehead, Tim Reid, Kelly's Heels and Danna & The Changes are on board to provide the music and voices for these song-poems. Like the O'Neders project above, you can hear and buy it all at Bandcamp.

Siren=Sold Out.

It's getting to be as inevitable as death, taxes, and the sun rising in the east - the siren goes up, CD Baby's stock goes poof. The Adrian Whitehead disc is now sold out at the Baby, but Not Lame has it in stock (for how long, we'll see) for those who missed out. Otherwise, it's snooze, ya lose.

CD of the Day, 6/10/08: Adrian Whitehead-One Small Stepping Man

Usually, my practice is to listen to a CD over a couple of weeks before putting up a review, to get a feel for it and to make sure I initially don't overrate or underrate it. Then there's this disc, which I received three days ago and have listened to only a couple of times, and which I can say is easily the best new disc I've heard in many a month.

Adrian Whitehead hails from Melbourne, Australia, and he's on the incomparable Popboomerang label, home of many great power poppers. He's been mostly a sideman, with my only exposure to him being the track "Spector's Dead" (which appears here) on a Popboomerang comp from a few years ago. As good as that track is, nothing prepared me for how great this full-length is, in which Whitehead has shown his utter mastery of 60s and 70s-influenced pop forms that all of us in the power pop community enjoy. The Rolling Stone record guide once said that not liking the Beatles was as perverse as not liking the sun; the same could be said of this disc if you're a reader of this blog. While it draws its influences from the pop greats like the Beatles and Brian Wilson, it's also reminiscent of contemporary acts such as personal favorites like Derby and The Red Button as well as Jason Falkner, Michael Carpenter and Ken Sharp.

The bouncy and appropriately titled "Caitlin's 60's Pop Song" gets things going, and if your ears don't perk up within the first 30 seconds or so, you might be better off reading Pitchfork. The 6-minute "Saving Caroline" follows, and while my normal philosophy regarding songs is that 3-4 minutes is more than enough for a pop song (unless it's "Hey Jude"), it never wears out its welcome as it captures the late-period Beatles sensibility perfectly. "Radio One" is as catchy as it gets, and its breezy midtempo quality reminds me of Carpenter; "You Are The Sun" is piano ballad bliss that builds to a poptastic crescendo; and "Julia" may be even better than the Beatle track of the same name. Meanwhile, the aforementioned "Spector's Dead" doesn't have a wall of sound but provides enough sonic detours to keep things interesting, and "Ways of Man" has a bit of a Todd Rundgren-at-his-poppiest feel. And "Better Man" might be the coolest track on the disc, complete with an awesome honky tonk piano break in the middle.

Folks, step right up and meet the #1 disc of 2008.

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