CD of the Day, 10/3/07: Stockton-Euphonia

At long last, here's the debut CD from Stockton, who teased us with the brilliant "Dreamworld" last summer on their myspace page. For those who need a refresher, Stockton is 2/3 of the late, great Cotton Mather (guitarist Whit Williams and drummer Dana Myzer) plus ex-20/20 member Ron Flynt. Along with former Mather frontman Robert Harrison's Future Clouds and Radar, we now have two Mather-related projects available in the same year after a six-year drought since 2001's The Big Picture.

Mather comparisons are inevitable here, and it doesn't hurt that Flynt isn't that different vocally from Harrison. But I always thought that Williams was Mather's secret weapon; normally in power pop, guitar virtuosity takes a distant back seat to the song, but Williams is one of the rare power pop guitarists who has his own distinctive sound (just think of "My Before and After" and "40 Watt Solution" for instance), and this makes Euphonia more the "new Cotton Mather record" than Future Clouds and Radar (which was no slouch either). His mark on the disc becomes apparent very early, with the extremely strong opening quintet of "Free Drinks", "My Foreign Legion" (there's a Matheresque title if I ever heard one), the aforementioned "Dreamworld" and "Pipe Dream Blues", several of which feature harmonies sung over Williams' Revolver-like guitar play, almost like a mash-up of "Because" and "Rain". In fact, these four tracks as a unit trump any combination of four tracks from The Big Picture (unless it's "40 Watt Solution" played four times).

Which is not to imply that there's a cliff-like drop-off after the first four tracks. "See Rock City", "Lowbrow", and "Make It Right" would be the highlights of most band's albums, and here they're fighting for fifth place. And album closer (not counting the "Dreamworld" reprise) "Night Is Over" is an altogether different treat, sounding nothing like Mather but instead like kind of a laid-back "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)". To make a long story short, we have another top 10 of 2007 contender on our hands here.

MySpace | Kool Kat | iTunes

Random Musings

* Mark Bacino has a new album in the works and has made an mp3 from it available for download:

Happy (www.thequeensenglish.com/mp3s/Happy.mp3)

(Note: You'll have to cut and paste the link here due to some Blogger quirk I can't manage to figure out, as it kept putting extraneous stuff in the link when I tried to hyperlink it.)

If you're not familiar with Mr. Bacino, head on over to eMusic and sample his previous release, 2003's Million Dollar Milkshake, or his myspace page. Or better yet, grab several mp3s from that album and his first, Popjob, at his official site.

* If like me, you loved Ryan Adams circa 2001's Gold but grew impatient with his subsequent genre exercises, grab a hold of the latest Griffin House disc, Homecoming. It's available at eMusic, and the highlights include "Burning Up The Night" and the Adamsesque-titled "The Guy That Says Goodbye to You Is Out of His Mind". Three tracks from it are also streaming at myspace.

* In case you wondering whatever happened to Cotton Mather's Robert Harrison, wonder no more. He has a new band/project titled Future Clouds and Radar, and they're releasing a self-titled double disc on March 13. From what I've heard ahead of time, it's going to be more art pop than power pop, but you can judge for yourself from these two mp3s:

Drugstore Bust
Quicksilver

Meanwhile, nothing new to report on Stockton, the band formed by the other two former members of Mather, who gave us the brilliant track "Dreamworld" (still streaming at their myspace page). If you go to their myspace, it still states the debut album is to be released in "late 2006".