With Make My Day, Thomas Marolda reaches another milestone with The Toms: his 25th release. Yet there’s little sense that he’s running out of songs—or reasons to make them. For Marolda, writing and recording remain both an obsession and a source of exhilaration. We spoke with him about inspiration, craftsmanship, knowing when a song is finished, and what keeps the Power Pop fire burning.
Make My Day is your 25th release. What still makes you want to write another Toms song?
Some people get high or buzzed by other means. My high comes from writing and recording new songs. It’s always inspiring when my fans, friends and relatives ask me when The Toms are coming out with new material.
Also, it seems that in the last ten years music has diminished in all areas, so I almost try to make up for the lack of originality, excitement, musicianship, songcraft and production. Sometimes I improve and sometimes I stay the same.
You describe the album in terms of emotion, craftsmanship and innovation. How much of a Toms song is craftsmanship—and when does the art kick in?
I’m never satisfied after spending many hours over a particular song, so I scrap numerous songs and try to outdo myself with the replacement.
I may start a song and finish it very quickly, but the production direction may take the song somewhere that’s not working for me. If I don’t get goosebumps from any part of the track, I will ditch it.
How do you keep the Power Pop fire burning after all these years without simply recreating what worked before?
That would be like asking Paul McCartney why he continues to write and record. You never know where that next gem is coming from, so you keep exploring your own talents and your own preferences in what’s out there.
I normally have to go back to my roots, as today’s new artists and songs fall short of inspiring or impressing me.
Great Power Pop can sound effortless, but there’s usually a lot of craftsmanship behind it. How do you know when a song is finished—and when to stop?
That’s an easy question: goosebumps will tell me that the track is where it’s supposed to be with me.
So, what can we expect from The Toms when Make My Day comes out?
It’s scheduled to be released October 2, 2026. There is also a preview available now.
On Against All Opps, The Creepy Jingles pack humor, hooks and some surprisingly heavy ideas into six compact songs. Behind the oddball titles and instantly accessible melodies, there’s plenty going on beneath the surface: love bombing, hypocrisy, self-examination and the uncomfortable possibility of becoming the very thing you once criticized. I spoke with Jocelyn Olivia Nixon about finding comedy in dark places, writing melodies that stick, and why the best material is often hiding in the dirty corners we’d rather avoid.
One of the things that really stands out on Against All Opps is the balance between humor and more poetic, sometimes even vulnerable lyrics. A title like “Throw Me in Some Rice” immediately makes you smile, while other lines hit in a very different way. How do you find that balance? Do you start with the funny or absurd idea and discover something deeper underneath it, or is it the other way around?
Yeah, exactly. If it’s a heavy theme, I naturally want to take the piss and lighten the mood to entertain myself. If I start out with a funny idea, I look for the depth or tragedy to fill out the idea.
A great song has layers, just like people, and if I’m doing it right, it’s left open-ended enough that other people end up projecting their own meaning onto my songs. Which means I made them feel or care.
My goal is always to make something melodic enough, catchy enough, that they don’t hear the lyrics right away anyway. They get swept up in the beat or the hook, then after a couple of listens the lyrics start to stand out and people go, “What have I been singing?”
I always like to leave plenty of Easter eggs in my lyrics for the people who look closely enough. That was always my experience as a listener anyway. My favorite art felt interactive. I learned to put that focus into my work. The more layered the song is, the more time you will spend with it trying to see every angle.
The melodies on Against All Opps feel incredibly fluid. Even when the songs take unexpected turns, nothing seems forced — the melodies just seem to naturally find their way to the next part. How do you develop your melodies? Do they usually arrive quickly, or is finding that natural flow something you work on extensively?
When I’m writing melody, it happens in different ways. Sometimes I’ll have a hook idea that just comes to me, and I figure out the chords around it and build an arrangement. Most times I will just block out a chord progression that sticks with me and focus on the space in between.
I’ve noticed over the past couple of years that when I restrict myself within a simple progression, I find some of the catchiest melodies in those spaces, and it informs where I’m going for the chorus. Then the chorus melody informs the bridge.
Melody comes easily for me, typically. I labor over the words more because my focus is to write something that reflects the human condition. A melody can start to lose meaning without the weight of that experience grounding it.
“You Don’t Trend” feels like a pretty good introduction to The Creepy Jingles. What was the idea behind the song?
I like the idea of the narrator of the song being an underdog, completely aware of how ridiculous and rigged the whole game is, pointing out the hypocrisy of it all, but participating anyway to attempt to overcome it and try to change things from the inside.
However, once they gain the access, attention, power and influence, we find the character falls victim to the same missteps they criticized and attempted to change, ultimately failing to break the cycle.
It’s part comedy, part cautionary tale. A story of the prey becoming the hunter. Or the hero living long enough to see themselves become the villain. The ugly duckling becoming the swan and then judging beauty contests. Take your pick.
“Funhouse Mirror” has a different feel from some of the more playful songs on the EP. What’s behind that song?
I wanted to write a song about love bombing. I just saw a lot of meat on the bone with the idea that one person is being sincere and attempting to have a thoughtful dialogue, while the other person shuts down the concern and is just like, “Baby, I love you. You’re crazy, you’re my everything. Come back to bed.”
Once a song is finished and released, it stops being entirely yours. The listener brings their own experiences, interpretations and meanings to it. With these six songs now out in the world, what are you most curious to hear from listeners — and is there a song on Against All Opps where you particularly hope people will find something that you didn’t necessarily put there yourself?
I hope all my songs elicit that reaction. I think people naturally project onto things that resonate with them. If I do my job well, someone will think I’m singing directly to them or about them.
If I had to pick one song in particular, “Nü Fables.” It’s definitely the most personal song on the album. It would be cool for people to see themselves in that song.
I spend a lot of time looking into the depths of myself and my relationships to understand the greater picture of everything. I think the best songs and life lessons are in the dirty corners we don’t want to look at or address. I see that as golden fodder.
I hope listeners will put themselves under the microscope and explore their inner world and hearts. I want people to look deeper at themselves and the people in their lives. If folk can come to love and accept themselves, they will naturally have a much easier time extending that grace to others.
On their new record Grim Up North, Modern Marriage wrap darkly funny stories, oddball characters and sharp observations in irresistible power pop. We spoke to Ben Savage about Merseyside, melody and the peculiar everyday moments that find their way into the band’s songs.
There’s something very English about Modern Marriage — rough, melodic, witty and slightly awkward. Where does that come from?
Our ‘Englishness’ is potentially just a reflection of who we are and the result of growing up in Merseyside. The songs are predominantly about everyday life and the strange characters encountered along the way, and it wouldn’t make sense to present them any other way. The three of us consider ourselves very genuine people and what you see is pretty much what you get. Merseyside is full of oddball characters, and Scousers have an idiosyncratic sense of humour, which hopefully comes across in the songs. I do of course love very ‘English’ bands, from the Kinks and the Who through to TV Personalities and Half Man Half Biscuit, who have always been fairly insular from outside influences.
Your songs are wordy, but the melodies never get lost. How do you balance storytelling with melody?
The storytelling aspect comes fairly naturally – for further reading, feel free to check out the ‘Customer of the Day’ series on the ‘Skeleton Records’ Facebook page, which is me living my day job. The melody is a bit of a non-starter, and I wouldn’t take a song to the band unless I feel the melody is adequately strong enough in the first place. We’re often told that the songs are “catchy,” or “earworms that stay in your head for days, whether you want them to or not.”
I hear The Jam, Buzzcocks, Squire and The Real Kids, but Grim Up North never feels nostalgic. How do you make those influences your own?
I personally feel the songs live in their own detached state of time, where the sensibilities of the 1977 music explosion are applied to growing up in 21st Century Liverpool. They’re never truly modern nor truly nostalgic – they’re all somewhere in between, and I like that. As for influences, we’re all music geeks and we’d be here all night giving the full list. To oversimplify, I’m a proud mod/power pop fan, Eloise likes the obscurest music in the history of the world, and Danny has an encyclopaedic knowledge of Tenacious D that confounds all but his closest friends and family.
Your songs are full of specific people, places and situations. What comes first — the story, the melody or the character?
The songs tend to start from one idea, usually a title or key phrase that stimulates my curiosity, and then I go away and pretty much write the whole thing in one go. I’ve got a leftfield imagination, so the smallest of ideas usually ends up a long way away from where might be expected. For example, ‘Terry’s Last Fag’ was a piece of graffiti on the wall of a rehearsal studio, which turned into the story of a man working the night shift at his local supermarket, getting caught shoplifting and needlessly drinking bleach to evade the long arm of the law. ‘Gerry and His Pacemaker’ is about an octogenarian banjo player and ‘IKEA Flatpack’ a jealous lover, who kills her ex and disposes of his body in the titular item of Swedish household furniture. ‘Blue, Red and Yellow… Maybe’ was a deliberate attempt to write a very dark song from the point of view of a stalker, but dress it up as giddily happy power pop, to reflect his contentment stalking his crush around B&Q, “humorously whistling Husker Du.”
The album feels deeply rooted in Northern England. Could these songs have been written anywhere else?
Probably not. The North of England famously doesn’t take itself too seriously and we’re quite a self-aware bunch up here. Merseyside in particular has a warped sense of humour and identity even for Northern standards. We also have a disproportionately high number of local eccentrics, and I couldn’t have dreamed the song scenarios up in the first place without being acutely conscious of our local environment.
On September 25, Prize Collect returns with Even Light Gets Dark, a new six-track EP from guitarist and songwriter Marzio Scholten. Balancing introspection with moments of widescreen indie rock, the record also points towards what might come next. We spoke with Scholten about unsettling opening lines, cinematic melodies, working with producer Sam van Hoogstraten, and why this EP feels like a prelude to Prize Collect’s next chapter.
The opening lines of “Even Light Gets Dark” have been haunting me. Where did that song begin — and what was happening when you wrote those first lines?
I understand why those lines might have been haunting you; it’s pretty dark. The opening line, “Let me tell you how to suffocate yourself using a pillowcase,” came to me during a summer in France, while listening to a demo of this song. It seemed like such a heavy way to start the song, but I think it works because it puts the listener on the edge of their seat. After that line, the lyrics kind of wrote themselves. I wanted to show the contrast between light and dark, happy and sad. I think it’s kind of my way of saying that even though people seem happy on the outside, they may have dark things going on in their lives. It’s one of my favourite songs on the EP.
“The Last Day” has such a huge, almost cinematic melody. How do you stop yourself from going full U2 when a song starts reaching that big?
First of all, I wish I was as good at writing songs as U2 are, but I do understand what you mean. For me, “The Last Day” actually has a kind of classic Beatles-esque chord sequence and harmony. When I was writing this song, the chords came first and the melody just seemed so natural on top, maybe because it has such a classic feel to it. Anyway, back to your question: while producing, I think there’s always a point where you can choose between going “all out” or staying on a more understated path. It’s a cliché, but the song tells you what to do, in a way. The producer, in this case my friend — and guitarist in the band — Sam van Hoogstraten, was also a huge factor. The nice thing about all of this is that live you can make the choice more organically and in the moment, so during a concert a song that’s understated on the record can go “all out”, and vice versa.
How did Even Light Gets Dark come together? Did these songs grow out of the same period, or did you gradually realise they belonged together?
I’m continuously writing songs and demoing them. After the Prize Collect debut album came out, I already had more than enough for a new album. Sam van Hoogstraten (who I mentioned before) and I got together for dinner and talked about how to move forward. He said that he wanted to produce the next Prize Collect releases, and we came up with the idea of just grabbing a couple of the best songs that I had demoed and starting to work on them without any clear idea of how to release them. First, we thought it might be a few separate singles, but soon we realised that we had six songs that fit together and decided to work towards an EP.
Was there a moment during the making of the EP when you thought: “Yes, this is exactly what Prize Collect should sound like”?
Ehm, no, not really. I mean, I think that writing music is always a work in progress. There are songs on this EP that give me the feeling of exploring that side more, like “Inside Your Soul”, which has this Britpop-ish vibe to it. The nice thing about this being an EP is that it feels like I can still experiment a bit. I feel that the next LP, the follow-up to our debut, should be a very coherent batch of songs that maybe sets the tone for what Prize Collect should sound like. This EP is a prelude to that.
What do the coming months look like for Prize Collect? What’s next after Even Light Gets Dark?
Well, it’s a relatively small release, so we’re not doing a huge tour or anything. To present this music live, I decided to do one bigger show instead of a few small ones. On October 28, we’re playing at dB’s in Utrecht. I invited Coparck to join us on the bill, and they happily agreed. It’s going to be a great evening of indie music. I’m very much looking forward to playing these new songs live. Next year, we’ll do a few more shows. Meanwhile, I’m writing and demoing, and the contours of a new album are already forming.
The punch line of Sweet Sweet Music Blog is “Let’s Put the Power Back in Pop.” And if you don’t know what that means, please listen to Lex Bauman’s new album, The Dangerous Game. Better yet: put on the classic debut albums of The Beat and The Romantics, and then The Dangerous Game.
It will take you as high as a Power Pop kite can go.
It took me to a height where, as a 56-year-old, I honestly thought “While We’re Still Young” was about me.
So where does a young artist get a sound like this? Bauman talks to Sweet Sweet Music Blog about hooks, Cheap Trick, Tinted Windows, working with Tuk Smith and finding his own place in the long and glorious power pop tradition.
The Dangerous Game feels like a collection of small anthems — songs that are incredibly catchy without ever feeling overworked. Where does that instinct for melody and hooks come from?
I’ve grown up listening to all sorts of bands: KISS, Marvelous 3, The White Stripes, Sawyer Brown, Cheap Trick, Queen, George Strait, Guns N’ Roses, etc. They are all very different, but they all have very strong melodies and hooks in their songs. That is just the music that I love, so I think when I write a song, that stuff all just seeps in there.
There’s a strong sense of Cheap Trick, Rick Springfield and The Cars running through the album, but The Dangerous Game never feels like a nostalgia exercise. How do you take those influences and make sure the songs still sound unmistakably like Lex Bauman?
You take little bits of inspiration from songs or artists, but never too much from one. We always listen to music while writing. The Cars, Rick Springfield, Cheap Trick — those are all influences, but so are Tom Petty, Springsteen, Katy Perry, Goo Goo Dolls, etc. I just take the best from every genre and era and run it through my own filter.
You’re a young artist making a record that sounds remarkably confident and fully formed. When did you first realize that this was the sound you wanted to pursue? Was there a particular record or moment that made everything click?
It was probably a gradual thing. I started playing when I was 9. I was learning White Stripes and Queen songs. I love all sorts of music: softer, poppy music like Bleachers; soulful music like Otis Redding; heavy music like Mötley Crüe; heartland rock like Bruce Springsteen, etc. When I was around 13, I wanted to make something that sounded like The Killers meets Def Leppard. I got really into the Marvelous 3 around that same time. Then I got turned on to a band called Tinted Windows. That was probably the moment, if there is just one, that really established where I wanted to go musically.
How did you find the sound of The Dangerous Game? Did you go into the studio with a very clear idea of how you wanted the guitars, vocals and production to sound, or did the identity of the record emerge while you were making it?
We demo pretty extensively. Tuk Smith is my co-writer and producer. Our outlook on music is pretty similar, so when we write and demo, it comes out pretty organically. By the time we get to the studio, the songs are probably more than 95% formed.
The songs are out now, and at some point they stop being yours and become the listener’s. What is it like to let people discover these songs and turn them into their own little anthems?
It’s really cool. I just think about writing these songs in a garage, and then you are up on stage and people are singing along to these words with you. It can be mind-blowing. The songs all mean something special to me, but when other people make them a piece of their lives and make them mean something to them, that is a huge honor, and I’m incredibly grateful.
Fifteen songs, and Jamie Coghill goes just about everywhere with them. On Pretending To Be A Person, The Jimmy C moves from country-tinged pop to seventies rock swagger, quirky sixties psych, garage rock and even flashes of proto-metal, with little concern for stylistic consistency. Somehow, it all hangs together. The constant is Coghill’s instinct for the song itself: whatever clothes it happens to be wearing, the hook comes first.
That restless musical curiosity has been part of The Jimmy C from the beginning. Coghill talks about discovering Nuggets after growing up on grunge, his love of bands that happily jump between genres, and an approach to songwriting that relies more on instinct than intention.
We spoke with Jamie about where those songs come from, the art of sequencing an album in the streaming age, the strange story behind the cover of Pretending To Be A Person, and what happens when you finally let a record go and allow listeners to make it their own.
This album seems to go everywhere musically, and I love that about it. Was that freedom to move between styles something you consciously wanted when you started making the record, or did the songs simply take you in different directions?
It might be the same for all songwriters but I don’t actually understand where my musical ideas come from and I very rarely set out to write in a specific style. I like to say that I try to let a song happen without getting in the way too much! It’s a case of letting the idea just happen organically or by instinct … that sounds pretty artsy-fartsy wanky-douchebaggy but I think part of me doesn’t want to analyse it too closely in case I lose it.
My taste in music probably plays a large part in the varying styles of music I make. I grew up in a country town in the 80s and early 90s and was a full-on grunge kid. Classic cliche 70s rock and grunge were my life and I was incredibly judgemental of all other musical styles. The blinkers came off when I was about 18 and I discovered movie soundtrack music (Goblin, Morricone, John Barry) and most significantly, Rhino’s Nuggets CD box set. Film music was a passion but was far too progressive, jazzy or orchestral for a young drummer to ever imagine playing by himself, but the Nuggets music was incredibly inspiring – 4 CDs of late 60s garage punk and pop! The best song from bands that mostly only ever got to record one single or one album. It was an amazing mix of wild fuzzy garage pop and psych from a hundred different bands but all somehow fit together perfectly in a unified collection. It was an awakening, and a gateway into the amazing music those bands made.
Some of the music was primitive enough that it felt like even I could learn a few guitar chords and write dumb noisy songs like that, but it was also sprinkled with sophisticated proto-power-pop that broadened my thinking of what a song could be. I had been drumming since I was 12 years old and by 2005 I had learned enough guitar from being around guitarists that I was able to start recording primitive garage songs all by myself on my Tascam 4-track recorder. That’s right, the drummer was no longer reliant on the “talent”!
My songwriting has become a little more sophisticated over the 21 years of making music as The Jimmy C but that broad range of styles remains one of my defining characteristics. My favourite bands are ones that jump around the genres too – Ween, Super Furry Animals, Sloan, Jellyfish … it’s great music for people with a short attention span!
There are some pretty extreme contrasts in the tracklist. You can have a hard-rocking song followed by something tiny and introverted, or a full song followed by a 40-second instrumental. Was the sequencing part of the creative process for you? Did you enjoy putting those contrasts next to each other?
Absolutely, yes! I look at albums as an entire piece of art. Concept albums as a genre are usually incredibly pretentious but the idea of unifying a collection of songs as a whole piece is wonderful.
Pretending To Be A Person isn’t a concept album but I always like to approach my albums with a focus on the journey that the songs take the listener on. I like to experiment with how one song flows into the next, sometimes letting it take an emotional breath or exploiting this power to knock the wind out of the listener with a jarring and sudden transition. It’s all part of the fun of making music and I refuse to let it go, even in the age of streaming consumerism where many artists release songs individually with the expectation that they’ll end up in a playlist rather than the running order of an album.
Perhaps it’s naive of me to expect listeners to take in albums as a whole in one sitting or maybe it’s stubbornly retro of me to still care about the track sequence of an album but I’m a total record dork and love albums. All art is storytelling so why shouldn’t the entire album also tell a story?
When you start a new song, how do you decide what kind of song it is going to be? Does the melody tell you, does the lyric suggest a particular sound, or do you sometimes deliberately think, “I want to make a song that sounds like this”?
As I mentioned above, I like to let a song happen without thinking too much about it. My ideas for songs aren’t conscious or deliberate and usually happen when I’m not in a musical headspace at all. It seems to happen while I’m doing something mundane like showering or walking to work. An idea just pops into my head – a little snippet of melody and a few lyrics – on repeat in my head so then I’ll go and hum, sing or strum (if there’s a guitar nearby) the idea into my phone as a voice memo so I don’t forget it and can get on with my day.
These voice memos can sometimes sit around for years without turning into a full song but it’s a good way to catalogue these thoughts and not forget ideas that could turn into a good song one day. I’ve had some song ideas that are so complete I can finish them really fast and have them fully recorded in a few days. Other ideas will lay dormant for years and I’ll listen to it and another section of the song magically pops into my brain and now it’s a song.
I’ve read about Nick Cave and Harry Nilsson going into an office all day and just writing songs. I’d love to try that one day but I just don’t have the time because I’m a 49 year old with kids and a day job. I’ve also read about Andy Partridge from XTC playing around with a new guitar tuning and some kind of synesthesia kicks in and he’s written something completely brilliant like River Of Orchids or Love On A Farmboy’s Wages! But again, that’s only possible with having time to pissfart about in the studio. Normal people don’t have that luxury!
I can only think of one occasion when I’ve written a song after consciously wishing I could write a song like Ever Fallen In Love by The Buzzcocks. I went to bed thinking about it and woke up half an hour later with the idea for I’m No Good For You, which ended up on the first album of my other project Lava Fangs.
Writing music for soundtracks is totally different though. I’ve written and recorded music and songs for 4 movies and 2 web series so far. I’ve done a couple of podcast themes and some video art installations too! I really enjoy doing movie music, it’s challenging and forces me out of my usual routines and comfort zone and gets me writing in genres I normally wouldn’t try. It’s great because there’s a specific reference point like a script or rough cut of a scene and these references help determine the music. With the two soundtracks I’ve done for indie filmmaker Joe Bizarro (Brides Of Satan, shot in California and Curse Of The Baby Eater, shot in Austin TX) he would send me a rough cut of a scene with some placeholder music that they’d never be able to afford the license for and so I would have to write something that captures the essence of someone else’s song without ripping it off or becoming a parody. It’s called Rutling but that’s a very specific reference … look up The Rutles and hear Neil Innes of The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band’s incredible Beatles songs that are in many ways better than The Beatles!
The artwork is very specific and has a slightly strange, almost surreal personality of its own. What was the idea behind it, and how closely is the artwork connected to the music?
I suppose the biggest connection is that it all came out of my head! And my head might be a strange and surreal place … My day job is graphic designer for a CD & DVD company in Melbourne, Australia. I’m always thinking about cover design and in my spare time sometimes just put ideas together with no real purpose. Sometimes it might be something I can use for the freelance design I do for local musicians and the Cheersquad Records & Tapes label. I’ve done designs for Aussie legends like Kim Salmon, Dave Graney, Steve Kilbey, The Meanies, Hard-Ons, The Stems … heaps of stuff …
The cover for Pretending To Be A Person started as a simple geometric design inspired by some of the late 50s/early 60s jazz covers on the Command label, things like Persuasive Percussion, Provocative Percussion and Murder Inc., and at the last second I decided to add a vectorised picture of my cat Diego (aka DooDoo) to it! It softened the formal look of the design and I felt like it fit in more with the title Pretending To Be A Person – though the title isn’t about animals pretending to be people, it’s more about neurodiversity (a subject I’ve dealt with a lot recently with friends and family) and how we mask our differences and feelings. We’re all pretending to be a person on the outside while dealing with all sorts of stuff on the inside. That theme comes up a bit in the music on the album and fit nicely with an illustration of my autistic looking cat!
The songs are out now, and they are no longer entirely yours to interpret. They belong to the listeners to discover, make their own connections with and find their own meaning in. What is it like for you to reach that point with a record?
It’s a relief! Up until this point I’ve been stressing about all the tiny flaws in every aspect of the singing, performance and production. That leaves a lot of room for imposter syndrome to creep in and make me wonder why I bother to do it and weather it’s worth it or even good enough to release! I think most artists go through this to some extent but it feels amplified when it’s just one person responsible for everything. It’s so enjoyable doing the recording and mixing, there’s a real endorphin hit from creating a song out of thin air, but once it’s all finished, the business and marketing stuff takes over and you’re not being creative anymore. It feels like you’re bothering people with your music. Inflicting it on them even!
But at this point I’m free off all the anxiety and I can actually distance myself from it and listen to it as though I’m hearing it at face value like everyone else – and it’s actually pretty good and kind people are telling me so!
I really like hearing people’s interpretations of my songs – mostly I really like knowing that somebody’s even listened to my songs!! It’s so cool that music has a built in ambiguity that lets different people interpret the same music in different ways. I do it to my own music too, part of the release process is writing brief descriptions of the songs for distributers and radio, I often have to listen back to the songs to work out what I’m even singing about! Sometimes the story is clear from the start but even then there may be a deeper interpretation I find hiding in the words, either that or I’m retroactively adding a more clever concept to a song! Both are valid!
The most confronting lyrical theme on the album is Pieces Of Me. The literal idea is a song written from the perspective of a terrorist suicide bomber but on top of that these songs are also pieces of me and by releasing them into the world they’re also “raining down for all to see” through global streaming. The literal meaning is probably just a metaphor for anxiety … the older I get the more anxious I get! It could just be all the heavy things going on in the world these last few years (definitely an influence on parts of this album) or maybe just part of growing old. I never used to think twice about playing drums at festivals and big venues packed full of people but now I’m a nervous wreck for a week before a Sunday afternoon gig to 30 people!
But I’m no expert, I’m just lucky to be here and grateful for the opportunity to talk about my music! Music is so special that you can interpret so many layers even in dumb little ditties like mine!
There’s a particular kind of record that only gets made once a band has stopped worrying about what it’s supposed to prove — and that’s the record THE MORNING LINE has made with STARS, out September 18th on Big Stir Records. Twenty-one tracks, twenty-plus years, and a back catalog stretched between a 2007 debut and a 2017 follow-up that a lot of fans never got the chance to connect. Rather than just slap a “greatest hits” sticker on the whole thing and call it a day, the band went back in and remixed the songs they cared about most, added two genuinely new ones (“90s Pickup” and “This Lens”), and rounded it out with the single “Anhedonia” — ending up with something that’s less a victory lap than a re-introduction.
I sat down with Stephen Smith, by his own modest insistence more melody writer than lyricist, to talk about what happens when you go back and remix twenty years of your own songs, what it’s like discovering your old lyrics are “not half-bad,” and why a two-decade-old band still bothers showing up.
A “best of” record usually gets made when a band’s looking backward out of necessity — end of a chapter, lineup change, anniversary. What was the actual trigger for STARS? Was there a specific moment where someone said “we should do this now”?
Gambling debt? No, I wouldn’t say there was necessity here, so much as desire. We wanted to hear the songs at their best, hence the remixing, and we wanted to have a document that collected a lot of disparate material in one place. In terms of sound, every single thing we’ve done has been recorded and mixed by Peter Craft, who also happens to play drums on most of the songs. His studio has evolved over the twenty-plus years he’s been recording, and he thought he could make the songs sound better. So that’s a part of it. Additionally, in some ways, I think of the band as two bands, not so much sonically as temporally. We put out our first record in 2007 and the next in 2017. So it seemed to me we had some fans of the 2007 record who may have been unfamiliar with our more recent material, and fans of the recent material who could be unfamiliar with the 2007 record. It made sense to have a single document to represent us, that the future (should there be one) can build on. It is a summing up, with improvements.
I credit my wife with the album including the new songs “90s Pickup” and “This Lens.” The record was originally envisioned as a purely retrospective collection. She said that we had to put a couple new songs on it to make it more compelling. Poets do this occasionally, releasing books containing “New and Collected” work. I’m glad we included the new ones because I really like them (obviously), and it does add variety.
Remixing old songs is a strange kind of time travel — you’re not just cleaning them up, you’re making new decisions inside old material. Was there a song where the remix changed how you personally feel about it?
This is something only a band member would probably notice, but the song “The Minutes” just seems more vibrant, more alive, than the previous version. It sounds like what I wanted it to be, but we weren’t able to do at the time. So the sound alone has taken me from, “that’s a good song,” to “goddamn, I love that one!” One of the more dramatic remixes is a song called “All Mine.” On our 2017 album, Smoke, we were delighted to have Paul Kolderie mix that song. He’s an all-time great, and he took some structural liberties with the song. We liked them, don’t get me wrong, but the remix revisits the original structure, makes it a bit longer, adds a chorus. So to me it becomes a bit of a new song.
Stephen, your lyrics get called literate and emotive — what’s a line from one of the older songs on STARS that still catches you off guard when you sing it now, for reasons you didn’t intend back when you wrote it?
Geez, Patrick, that’s going to require some thought. Well, let me start by saying I think of myself as more of a melody writer than a lyric writer, but going through this anthology assembly process has made me listen to the songs and think, “you know, some of these lyrics aren’t half-bad.”
This is not perfectly responsive to your question but, to again invoke the song “All Mine” that I just mentioned (which is not my favorite song, really!), it has a line in it, “we pay the cash and watch the gridded land pass by.” I always liked that line, because of the clarity with which I thought watching “gridded land pass by” captured the experience of flying in a plane. Today, however, the part of the line that delights me is the rhythm or cadence of it. So less the image it provides than the feel.
Is there a song on here that means something different to you now than it did when you wrote it — where age or distance changed what it’s actually about?
When I wrote “Spellbound,” I left a lot of space for what it was “about.” Mental illness? Self-harm? And listening to it today, I think, “Oh, maybe that’s just about growing up.” And it struck me as a theme in a lot of these songs. Getting comfortable in the world as an adult. Getting “credit in the straight world,” as Young Marble Giants sang. Yes, I’m an old man now, but I still have never felt like I know how to be a “grown-up.”
If a version of THE MORNING LINE from 2007 heard STARS, what do you think would surprise them most — not about the songs, but about the band that made them?
Well, I think an answer many people would probably give is “you’re still doing it?” But that doesn’t surprise me. We all love music and making music, and we are all close friends. If you love something, you do it, and who better to do it with than friends?
I think what would surprise them is that there are still a few people – not a lot – who care about what we’re doing. That there are at least a few ears that want to hear what we are up to. And I think they would be grateful. I know we are today.
STARS is out September 18, 2026 on Big Stir Records.
2026 keeps looking more and more like the year of the Power Pop resurrection, Bandcamp is writing about it, Shindig! Magazine is writing about it, and I can’t help myself, I need to list the Power Pop albums I have been listening to the first nine months of the year.
A few of these reviews started life over on Chiming Back, back when that was still where I kept my notes on this stuff. That blog is done, but the records aren’t, so those write-ups found a new home here instead.
So no, this isn’t a ranking, and it’s not trying to be definitive or comprehensive. It’s a batch of albums I genuinely can’t stop playing, offered up for no better reason than that I love this genre and these are the records currently proving why. More than twenty of them now, as it turns out, once I actually sat down and counted.
Make of that what you will. Here they are.
Lex Bauman: The Dangerous Game
The punch line of Sweet Sweet Music Blog is “Let’s Put the Power Back in Pop.” And if you don’t know what that means, please listen to Lex Bauman’s new album, The Dangerous Game. Better yet: put on the classic debut albums of The Beat and The Romantics, and then The Dangerous Game.
It will take you as high as a Power Pop kite can go.
It took me to a height where, as a 56-year-old, I honestly thought “While We’re Still Young” was about me.
Music City: Welcome to Music City
After one listen, “Pretty Feelings” already feels like a song that’s always existed. Not just because the melody slips into place so effortlessly, or because its themes are timeless, but because it carries itself like a hit, in the same way Adam Schmitt, Matthew Sweet, Fountains of Wayne, or Teenage Fanclub made hits in the ’90s. Instantly familiar. Effortlessly melodic. Impossible to resist.
Music City’s immaculate pop sound, strong enough to invite comparisons to The Lemon Twigs or Mod Lang, yet clearly its own, has therefore, perhaps conveniently, been described as part of what Shindig! Magazine calls the revival of the Third Wave of Power Pop. It’s a helpful tag, but Conor Lumsden’s songwriting reaches beyond neat categorization. The Irish-London songwriter draws as much from the shimmering brilliance of ’90s power pop as from its ’70s architects, The Raspberries, Big Star, and the rest of that sacred lineage.
And then something quietly remarkable happens: “Pretty Feelings,” which at first feels like the song, becomes just one great track among eleven others. Welcome to Music City doesn’t lean on one obvious single. It thrills because of its consistency, because of its depth of craft.
If we don’t collectively catch on, this record has all the ingredients of a future cult classic, the kind whispered about in the same breath as Phonograph or 12 in a Room.
Mod Lang: Borrowed Time
Mod Lang are a four-piece out of Detroit who channel the melodic rush of The Raspberries, the aching jangle of Big Star, and the John Lennon side of The Beatles, and somehow make it feel like it belongs firmly in the here and now. There’s nothing self-consciously innovative about what they do. Instead, they chase something far more elusive: the perfect pop song. Not as an exercise in nostalgia, not as museum rock, but as a living, breathing pursuit.
This is retro without kitsch. No wink, no quotation marks, just heart, hooks, and a belief that chiming guitars and skybound choruses still matter.
“What I Can’t Have” and “In Advance,” the opening one-two punch of Borrowed Time, take things to another level entirely. The confidence. The momentum. The sheer exhilaration. These songs don’t just sparkle, they surge. Long live Mod Lang.
The Goods: Goodbye Summertime
Goodbye Summertime is the follow-up to Don’t Spoil The Fun, one of my favorite records of last year, and it builds on everything that made that album so good: instantly gratifying guitar pop with melodies that grab you right away, but an emotional depth that only opens up the closer you listen.
Rob Good’s lyrics are the heart of it, direct, honest, unafraid to sit in vulnerability. The title captures a very specific kind of bittersweetness: change that hurts a little even when it’s leading somewhere better. “Wing” is the rawest moment on the record, written fast and recorded just as fast, in the middle of feeling it. “Ginger Rose” pushes Good into an unexpected falsetto that adds a whole other emotional layer, and “Waiting,” just voice and guitar, proves that a song doesn’t need length to leave a mark. Sometimes the small moments carry as much weight as the big ones.
Bleu: Sargeant Pepper Grinder
On Sargeant Pepper Grinder, Bleu turns grief into something bright, melodic and deeply human. It’s both a tribute to friends who are no longer here and a celebration of the people, memories and small moments that remain, wrapped in the kind of irresistible melodies and harmonies that have always defined his songwriting.
What makes the record so striking is how openly it sits with two conflicting feelings at once, genuine sorrow and real joy, side by side, refusing to cancel each other out. Bleu produced and mixed it himself, obsessing over every detail, and it shows: this is a record built as a lasting, tangible tribute, and it never once slides into sad-sack territory.
Rob Bonfiglio: The Over Under
The Over Under is the kind of album that keeps revealing itself the longer you sit with it. I liked it immediately, but months in, it’s become one of those records I return to when I need to reset. Bonfiglio wrote, recorded and mixed nearly all of it himself, whittling down a batch of some twenty songs to the ones that carried real weight, and the closeness of that process is audible everywhere. “Need You Know” is the emotional core, quietly vulnerable and built around a riff with a Fleetwood Mac-ish pull; “More Pure Than Gold” is its sharper, angrier counterpart, more political and more urgent. Both come from the same instinct: write what actually needs saying, and trust the songs to find their own shape.
A View of Earth From the Moon: Rolled Over Like A Wave
A View of Earth From the Moon is Jonathan Fickes’ band, and ever since 2017 I’ve been endlessly returning to Closer to a Ghost. “One Thousand Miles Apart” and “Distance Runner” still find their way onto nearly every playlist I make. Despite the long gap between releases, Rolled Over Like A Wave delivers exactly what you hope for from a follow-up: razor-sharp yet instantly accessible Power Pop songs filled with vivid reflections on the past, on why those memories can still matter in the present, and sometimes the other way around.
But this is far from a purely melancholic or nostalgic record. “Every For Free” and “Looking Straight Ahead” sound like the voice of someone fighting for change, or simply trying to scrape together fifty bucks. The urgency that drives opener “Emerson and Henry David Thoreau” never fades. These are not songs casually tossed together. They are stories that clearly needed to be told.
Albums like this are what keep Power Pop alive, fresh, and relevant. And if I end up being the only person who prefers Rolled Over Like A Wave over the latest records by The Lemon Twigs or Uni Boys, I’ll gladly stand by that. Power Pop doesn’t need more ’70s soft-rock nostalgia to stay relevant. It needs conviction, edge, and a sense of purpose. Rolled Over Like A Wave has all three.
Mopar Stars: Official Researchers Of The NJ Devil
Mopar Stars are built to hit. The songs hit hard and the hooks stick fast, but underneath all that noise sits a genuinely sharp eye for the small contradictions of everyday life, good days next to bad ones, a little optimism curdling into bitterness, just getting by next to wanting more. Where the band’s earliest demos were buried in cassette murk, Official Researchers Of The NJ Devil opens the sound up: bigger, clearer, unpretentious, but still every bit as physical.
Songwriter N-A-O built these tracks to be immediately memorable and let the rest of the band find their own parts around them, and you can hear that trust paying off. This sounds like a band that came up through Hüsker Dü punk and carries that same Replacements-style restlessness, never forgetting how satisfying it is to hit hard. No surprise the first pressing sold out fast.
Stephen Egerton: I Think You’re Overthinking This
The title alone is good advice, and the record follows through on it. Ten songs from the Descendents/ALL guitarist that never once strain for effect. This is craftsmanship with personality, not craftsmanship for its own sake. The flow from one track to the next feels effortless, melodies stick without announcing themselves, and every so often a chorus lands with exactly the punch you didn’t know you were waiting for. Sometimes that’s all you actually need.
The Legal Matters: Lost at Sea
Lost at Sea is The Legal Matters’ fourth album. Keith Klingensmith, Andy Reed, and Chris Richards had already refined their signature sound on 2016’s Conrad. That was the record where I fell for their harmonies, and I haven’t fallen out of love since. Those voices intertwine so naturally, serving songs that carry a distinctly ’70s sensibility, where everything revolves around melody, craft, and the quiet grandeur of the composition itself. No excess. Just the song.
That devotion to the beauty of the song isn’t lost on Lost at Sea. But when you hear the bite, almost the venom, in the guitar on “Everybody Knows,” you immediately sense that something has shifted. There’s an urgency here that wasn’t as pronounced before. The world is boiling, after all, and perhaps a pure L’art pour l’art, a song for the sake of the song, approach no longer feels sufficient.
At least, that’s how it sounds to me.
And strangely, that evolution feels beautiful. Without abandoning their core values, those luminous harmonies, that reverence for melody, The Legal Matters push themselves into different territory. Maybe even more relevant territory. For days like these.
Jesus Christ Taxi Driver: Taxi the Rich
When I first heard “Have It,” the opening track from Taxi the Rich, I couldn’t share it with the Power Pop community on Facebook fast enough. It sounded like a song that could just as easily have come from The Knack as from XTC. Others picked up on echoes of Sloan’s infectious energy and the quirky brilliance of Panorama-era The Cars.
That same creative tension runs through the album’s remaining ten tracks. Along the way, Jesus Christ Taxi Driver also taps into the sharp-edged indie funk sensibilities of bands like Yard Act and Hot Chip, creating a sound that feels both familiar and refreshingly contemporary. It’s a remarkable balancing act, a band that seems to hold the future of Power Pop in their hands, even as they insist on calling themselves a blues band. Or a violent rock band. Don’t let them fool you.
Local Drags: Cool If We Split?
“Hell is in the doorway, blocking light,” sings Lanny Durbin on the highly punchy, melodic “Highbeams,” one of the standout tracks on Cool If We Split?, the new release by Local Drags on the excellent Rotterdam label Stardumb Records. Durbin masters the classic mix of dark lyrics with catchy melodies and sparkling guitars, delivering a power pop masterclass that not only stands out today for its quality, but would have triumphed just as proudly in the 90s, one of the genre’s heyday periods, thanks to its shared sense of urgency and vibe with the most beloved bands of that era.
If you’re a fan of bands like The Shazam and Splitsville, to name just two examples, you’ll recognize that same level of quality when listening to Cool If We Split?. I get the sense that Local Drags is flying under the radar, which is remarkable, because the catalog Durbin is building is outstanding, and Cool If We Split? is a new high point.
Daniel Romano’s Outfit: Preservers Of The Pearl
Like Sloan, Daniel Romano’s Outfit might just be the best band in the world right now, and Preservers Of The Pearl makes that case without breaking a sweat. This is a band completely in tune with itself, forged through countless live performances into something tight, instinctive, and utterly alive. Power Pop songs the way Power Pop songs should sound: to the point, energetic, dangerous, and catchy as hell.
Hurry: Zoned Out
Hurry’s Zoned Out carries that scruffy, hooky warmth that made Nada Surf so easy to love, but the Teenage Fanclub blood runs even closer to the surface, and not just because Gerard Love himself shows up on “Moving After You.” Ten songs in, nothing here is rushed or overworked, just guitars that jangle exactly as much as they need to and melodies that land without straining for it. It’s the kind of record that sounds effortless because the effort went into knowing what to leave out. A quietly excellent addition to the year’s Power Pop pile.
The Greenberry Woods: It’s All Good, Sugar…
Just under a year after Mobtown by Splitsville, the Huseman brothers return with It’s All Good, Sugar…, the latest album from their other band, The Greenberry Woods. It’s an equally pleasant surprise, because twelve good songs in a row is something worth stopping to appreciate, in a world where thirty-second snippets are apparently enough to make a hit.
Not here.
What you get instead is craftsmanship, melody, and a healthy dose of mischief. Pop music has thrived on that combination for as long as it has existed, and The Greenberry Woods make it sound as fresh as ever. It’s All Good, Sugar… could just as easily have been released in the 1990s, and within the world of Power Pop, that happens to be one of the highest compliments imaginable.
Timeless is another. It applies here too.
The Greenberry Woods sound like masters of melodic songwriting, effortless hooks, and the kind of album that reminds you why you fell in love with Power Pop in the first place.
Salieri & The Turnspit Dogs: The Katzenklavier
Corey Landis has built something genuinely singular here. Experiment and melody in a long-distance relationship that works. Wayne Coyne and Mark Oliver Everett are fair reference points, as much as the young Elton John is, but this is its own world, one where the jester holds up a mirror and makes you question what you thought you understood. A tour de force, an artistic and intelligent statement, overwhelming in its beauty and urgency.
Cut Worms: Transmitter
Transmitter is Max Clarke’s fourth full-length album as Cut Worms, produced by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco. I’ve been a fan for a while now, and the reason is simple: Clarke sounds like Paul McCartney paying tribute to Buddy Holly. In my world, that’s about as high as the bar goes. Vulnerability and bravado intertwined so naturally it feels inevitable, like they were never meant to be separated in the first place.
The Well Wishers: Expected Outcomes
“I like a lot of different kinds of music, but the songs I love most are usually torn apart by a guitar after about two and a half minutes.” That used to be my answer whenever someone asked what I was into. I’m not sure it’s still entirely true, and I’m not sure it happens on every track of Expected Outcomes.
What I do know is that the guitars take center stage throughout all eleven songs. The tone, the playing, the power chords, the seemingly endless stream of punchy melodies. It’s absolutely fantastic.
So if someone asks me today what I listen to, my answer would probably be: “I like a lot of different kinds of music, but the songs I love most are usually torn apart by a guitar after about two and a half minutes. And right now, I’m listening to Expected Outcomes by The Well Wishers a lot.”
The Jimmy C: Pretending To Be A Person
Fifteen songs, and Jamie Coghill goes absolutely all over the place with them, country-tinged one minute, seventies rock swagger the next, a stretch of quirky sixties pop, a detour into something almost proto-metal, and none of it apologizes for the whiplash. Diversity wins out over stylistic consistency at every turn, and it should be a mess, but it isn’t, because the one rule that never bends is that the song is king. Whatever genre Coghill is trying on, the hook always comes first. Criminally under-known, and a genuinely fun record to get lost in.
The Maureens: Don’t Give Up
The Dutch live music scene overflows with cover bands, while the airwaves are dominated by party pop sung by fresh-faced young artists celebrating little more than a night at the local pub. The Maureens are the antithesis of all of that. No trend-chasing, no pub anthems, no calculated appeal to radio formats, just classic songcraft, chiming guitars, and melodies rooted in the golden age of guitar pop.
Don’t Give Up contains thirteen tracks, one meticulously crafted gem after another. Handmade, thoughtful, deeply human. No grand statements, just sincere and personal stories told with warmth and precision, melodies that linger long after the album ends. It’s earned them a home on Spain’s Meritorio Records, which makes perfect sense: few places in Europe have championed Power Pop as consistently or as passionately as Spain.
There’s something bittersweet about that for Dutch music fans. The Netherlands has produced brilliant guitar-pop bands, Johan, Daryll-Ann, Moss, and now The Maureens, yet so much of it remains hidden in plain sight. Thankfully, I found them. I hope more listeners will too.
The Creepy Jingles: Against All Opps
Six tracks, no wasted motion, and a title that doubles as a mission statement. Against All Opps comes from a band that clearly couldn’t care less about trending. “You Don’t Trend” says as much right out of the gate, and instead the record spends its short runtime chasing hooks that stick on the first pass. Titles like “Throw Me in Some Rice” and “Funhouse Mirror” hint at a band with a sense of humor that never gets in the way of the songcraft. It’s a small, slightly odd, thoroughly likeable record, hidden in the sweet sweet melodic jangle jungle where it belongs.
Kiwi Jr.: Blowin’ Up
Four years after Chopper, Kiwi Jr. return with Blowin’ Up, and the Toronto band’s restless jangle-and-garage charm hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s just more open, more confident, more lived-in than before. That didn’t happen by accident. After years of moving from record to record without much of a break, the band finally let themselves stop, write, throw things away, and figure out what still excited them about playing together. Ten years in, they know each other’s strengths well enough to steer with more confidence and take a few real risks with arrangements and time signatures, without ever overthinking the process. Putting themselves on the cover for the first time feels like the right, old-school way to mark that shift.
Sixteen albums in, Vinny Peculiar has long since carved out his own peculiar corner of British songwriting, literate, funny, warm-hearted and quietly eccentric, with an eye for the characters, contradictions and absurdities of everyday life. Classic English pop melodies carry the words, the songs always flowing easily even when the ideas take unexpected turns.
His new record, The Curse of You Know Who, finds him as curious as ever, wandering through conspiracy theories, misinformation, alternative realities and modern pop culture, with personal histories inevitably finding their way into the songs.
We spoke to Vinny about the ideas behind the record, how the songs took shape, Katy Perry in space, AI girlfriends and what comes next.
After sixteen albums, the remarkable thing is that the well still seems to be full of stories, characters and strange little worlds. Where did the inspiration for The Curse of You Know Who begin?
Writing in recent years I’ve taken a ‘concept’ and hung stories/ideas on it/them, so with The Curse of VP it was [mostly] conspiracy and misinformation feeding into song titles and angles, so you get alternative beliefs, some of them reimagined and mixed up with my own history. Moon Landing features a former headmaster…and plays with the popular idea of Kubrick’s stage management of the landing. I’m interested in people who flaunt popular wisdom and develop their own realities, ‘Billy Liar’ did a lot of that just to survive. AI Girlfriends work on a similar level of self delusion. Governments are very keen to call out conspiracy theory, there’s always more to it than they’d have you believe…
Your lyrics are obviously a huge part of what makes a Vinny Peculiar song a Vinny Peculiar song. But listening to this album, I’m struck just as much by the melodies and how effortlessly these songs seem to move. When you start a song, what comes first: the story, the words, the melody, or can it be any of those?
Different songs start in different ways, sometimes I’ll have a title and write on acoustic guitar or piano and things happen simultaneously, this was the case with Katy Perry, it started life as a country n western song. The harder edged rock songs are typically developed from riffs beats sounds and such in my home studio. Sometimes I’ll have a title but often I’ll develop the music first, cut it all up to suit. Flat Earth was a bit like that, I recorded several versions….
Katy Perry in Space is a great example. Everyone already has an opinion about Katy Perry going into space, so how do you turn something that is already part of the public conversation into a song that feels like it belongs entirely to you?
Katy Perry well yes, such a bizarre story, and true apparently, I have nothing against her, she’s a great pop writer but I don’t think this was her finest moment. I just tried to gently point out that there’s all this madness and suffering here on planet earth and she’s taking selfies in space on a vanity trip…
The album moves from Katy Perry in Space and AI Girlfriend to Flat Earth, Runcorn Abductions and Moon Landing. There’s clearly a fascination with conspiracy theories and alternative realities running through it. What attracts you to that world?
Its a fascinating world yes, I like to think I’ve retained a certain level of ambiguity in mining these ideas, in part I’m having some fun with it but there is more to it than popularism decrees, that much I do know…
You’ve made enough records now that you presumably know what a Vinny Peculiar album needs to be. Is there actually a formula that you can rely on, or does starting a new album still feel slightly uncertain and unfamiliar?
I’m always looking for ways to deliver albums in a ‘different’ way, I’ll be recording in rural Sweden soon which will spark a whole new ‘vibe’ I like to think. Watch this space, and thanks for having me.
There’s an immediacy to Mopar Stars that doesn’t need much explanation. The songs hit hard, the melodies stick, and underneath the noise there’s a sharp eye for the contradictions of ordinary life: good days and bad ones, optimism and bitterness, getting by and wanting more.
On their new release, Official Researchers Of The NJ Devil, Mopar Stars have taken the raw energy of their earlier recordings and opened it up. The sound is bigger and clearer without losing its edge, giving the hooks, voices and sheer physical force of the band more room to land.
We spoke with N-A-O about making the record, the importance of lyrics, trusting the rest of the band, turning songs into something that hits hard live, and the unexpected response to the album so far.
The sound of Official Researchers Of The NJ Devil feels raw and immediate, but at the same time it is huge, melodic and incredibly catchy. How did you find that particular sound for Mopar Stars, and was it something you were consciously looking for?
I wanted the recording to sound modern and unpretentious. I also wanted the backing vocals to be very clear this time.
Our first two demos were all smashed onto cassette and have this murky, distorted sound. I’m a big fan of that, but for the LP I wanted to record more tracks and have them be immediately discernible and memorable.
As far as the songwriting goes, the melodic and hooky nature of the record is definitely on purpose. I tried to make it catchy, for sure.
There is a darker side to the album hiding inside all those great riffs and hooks. Songs like “Everybody Wants What I Got” and “Only Bar In Town” almost become bitter anthems about work, money, loneliness and the way people try to get by. How important are the lyrics to you, and do you see the songs as being connected by that darker view of everyday life?
I would say no, the songs aren’t connected by a pessimistic outlook. Some of the songs on the record are bright and sunshiny, and some are bitter and dark. As a person, I don’t feel the same every day. I wanted the record to reflect the good and bad qualities we all possess, and the good and bad thoughts we all think.
The lyrics are very important to me, and I take a lot of care when crafting them. The vocal performance and lyrics are the second most important thing that makes a song good, behind the drums!
What is the dynamic within Mopar Stars when you are writing and recording? How do the different personalities and ideas in the band shape the songs, and is there much pushing and pulling before a song becomes what you hear on the record?
There isn’t a lot of pushing and pulling. I write a completed song and teach it to the band.
That being said, the band is really good and we’re very comfortable together. I believe it’s important to let the band make their own parts, mostly. I basically let them do whatever they want, then edit with them. Bill also offers arrangement help and advice.
There is something very physical about these songs. You can almost imagine the room going completely nuts when you play them live. Was making a record that would really come alive on stage one of the goals when you started working on it?
It wasn’t a conscious choice when I wrote the record. I think the live forward quality of the record comes out more when we start playing the songs together in our practice space.
Everyone comes from punk music, so having it be “hard hitting” is something we absolutely consider.
The album is out now, so it has left your hands and people are starting to form their own opinions about it. What has surprised you most about the way people have responded to Official Researchers Of The NJ Devil so far?
I was surprised to sell out the first pressing really quickly. That was nice.
