Twenty years and twelve albums into their journey, Smug Brothers show no signs of slowing down. Their latest release, Pinhole To Vortex, delivers another irresistible mix of crunchy guitars, jangling melodies, offbeat lyrics and infectious hooks. Recorded over several years at their own Fork Rock Studios, the album captures a band that continues to explore new ideas without losing its distinctive identity. We caught up with Kyle Melton to talk about the making of the record, the enduring appeal of guitar-driven indie rock, the bands keeping the scene alive and the satisfaction of releasing new music after two decades.
Pinhole To Vortex is your 12th album, and Smug Brothers have been making music for twenty years now. Looking back, how has the band’s sound evolved over that time, and what still defines a Smug Brothers record for you?
KM: Well, I think there are always the core elements we’re interested in: big hooks, slightly obtuse lyrics, and mix of crunchy and jangly guitars, and songs that have a way of sticking with the listener. In the early days, it was much more haphazard and scattershot. We tried a lot of ideas, and a lot of times we went with the initial spark of an idea rather than spending a little more time hashing it out and polishing it. These days, we have a bit more opportunity to flesh out ideas at our home studio, Fork Rock Studios, and add layers to the recordings that we didn’t in the early days. That said, we still try to stay as close to the spark of the idea as we can without working an idea into boredom for ourselves. As far as what makes a Smug Brothers record: it has to have some good hooks, there has to be a little weirdness in there, and some kind of throughline and flow for the listener from beginning to end. We want each album to be a complete and unique listen.
How did Pinhole To Vortex come about? Where did the songs and ideas for this album originate, and how did they develop into the finished record? Did you have a particular direction in mind, or did the album take shape as you went along?
KM: We started tracking for this album in summer 2024 and continued tracking until early 2026, but there were only a handful of tracking sessions with drummer Don Thrasher and I to get songs together. Some of the material was older, but I was writing a lot of new stuff as we went along, and slowly a coherent album emerged. There were 3 songs that ended up as digital B-sides, and several more that are still just in the pot for the future. It wasn’t until the very last recording session in fall 2026 that I knew what the last few songs needed to be to really tie the album together. That’s kinda the process of listening to what we have and figuring out what pieces complete the puzzle, so to speak.
Smug Brothers have been part of the independent guitar-pop and indie-rock world for a long time, and there’s a lively community of bands and listeners keeping that music alive. Do you feel part of a wider Power Pop or indie-pop scene? And are there contemporary bands you feel a particular connection with, or that you’re especially excited about?
KM: Oh yeah, there are a ton of great bands and fans in the guitar-centric indie rock world, and we’re thrilled to be a part of it in our own way. We’ve been good friends with The Laughing Chimes [Slumberland Records] for a few years now, typically doing a weekend of shows in Columbus and Athens once a year. They’re great and we’re looking forward to where they go in their adventures. We just played with Ex Pilots out of Pittsburgh a few weeks ago; Lavender Jets out of Cleveland are really great. And we’re big fans of Kiwi Jr., Sharp Pins, and Good Flying Birds. Lots of great music happening these days.
Has the response to Pinhole To Vortex surprised you in any way? Have the reviews, online coverage and word of mouth brought new listeners your way, or changed how people discover and engage with Smug Brothers?
KM: Well, it was exciting for us to get coverage in MAGNET this year, which has always been an important resource for all of us. It seems people are tuning in slowly to this new one, but that’s alright. We did a much shorter lead-up to the new album; one month instead of three from announcement to release. But we were able to get out to different cities with the new album, which we’ve not really been able to do in the past, so that’s helped a bit. It keeps growing at a glacial pace, which suits us just fine.
Pinhole To Vortex is out now, and the songs are no longer really yours — they belong to the listeners. After twenty years and twelve albums, what does it feel like to release a new collection of songs into the world? Is there a particular track on this record you’re especially curious to hear people make their own?
KM: Putting out a new album is always a buzz for me. Now that I’m handling all the recording and mixing, as well as doing the cover art with my own collages, it’s a new level of intense, sustained involvement for me with this album. But when it’s done and pressed and out to the world, it’s a great feeling that it’s alive, you know? I put so much of myself on the line and it’s great that there are people who are excited to hear it. I would really love to hear about people who are into tracks like “I’ve Seen Them Patch the Same Hole Trying to Get it Right” and “Drive Open in the Delicate Streams”. Those both have special meanings for me personally, so when other people can get into them, that makes me happy.
Gentle Hen’s Wink is an album of gentle, thoughtful but quietly provocative jangle pop. There’s an ease to these songs that disguises just how carefully they’re put together. Melodies that linger, small lyrical turns that open unexpected doors, and arrangements that reveal more with each listen. We talked to Henning Ohlenbusch about songwriting as a time capsule, trusting instinct, letting songs find their own meaning, and why music needs time to become a close friend.
Wink feels remarkably consistent — twelve songs that seem to belong together, with hardly any drop in quality. Were these songs written in a relatively concentrated period, or did you deliberately select songs from different periods that somehow fit together?
Thank you for saying so. Ever since I can remember I’ve been writing songs. I always have a few developing at a time. Eventually, I’ll step back and take stock and realize that I have enough to put together an album. That means that all of the groups of songs are written in the same chapter of my life so it only makes sense that there would be a common thread of some kind between them, a combination of my age, my surroundings, and the general mood of the world during that time. I think the same happens with the rest of the band. They develop their parts and play them in whatever voice they have in the current state of their existence. Each album is like a time capsule.
There’s a lot of craftsmanship in these songs, but they rarely sound labored over. How do craft and inspiration work together for you? Do you tend to start with an instinct and then refine it, or are you consciously constructing songs from the beginning?
Thank you! I like the way you put it, “start with an instinct and then refine it”. That is pretty accurate. I sit on the arm of the sofa everyday with my good old acoustic guitar and try to open myself up to some kind of inspiration by just letting my gut ride around the neck freely. The trick is to be ready to recognize the bit of music that speaks to you. Or sometimes it’s the same approach but with an emotion or idea, a snippet of words, a concept. Then it’s all about refining, which comes with just letting the song-in-process marinate in the background of my head at all times until more depth reveals itself.
I keep coming back to “One Joke,” partly because of the instrumentation, but especially that line, “One joke changed everything.” It suddenly opens up this whole story without explaining it. How does a line like that work for you — did the song grow out of that phrase, or did you discover the phrase while writing the song?
I believe the phrase appeared during the writing process after the first couple of verses already existed. But I’m not positive. It trickles out rhythmically with that descending almost sinister melody like a very clear statement, almost like the melody demanded those words. I had no choice.
“Parking Lot” feels almost like an emotional outburst at the end of the record. You’re not holding much back, and because of that it gives the album a lot of depth. Was it difficult to let the song get that emotionally direct, or was that exactly what it needed to be?
One of the many great things about the guys in the band is that Brian, Max, and Ken, besides being nimble and creative musicians, are all very empathetic people. When I introduce a song like Parking Lot, they’ll instinctively know just what to play to elevate the feeling. Brian’s rumbling drums during the verses are almost heartbeats, Max’s subtle bass slides by like trucks on the highway, and Ken’s lingering open guitar chords hang in the air like low clouds in a night sky. It didn’t have to be the final song on the record but it does seem like the right place doesn’t it?
On the Bandcamp page you specifically ask people to give the album three focused listens in a row, “the way you used to listen to albums.” Why is that important to you — and what do you hope somebody starts hearing on the second or third listen that they might miss on the first?
I have a fear that today when we have an endless array of distractions cascading in front of our faces, music is starting to become disposable. Why listen to a particular album again when there are another twenty thousand knocking on your door? I find that the real magic of music is how it can weave its way into your core. But that doesn’t happen if you don’t spend time with it. When I’m discovering something new, I make it a point of listening multiple times in a row, close listens and background listens. You might fall in love with a song at first sight but the connection is way more valuable and intense after it has really become a part of you. Songs are like people, you might like them when you first meet them, but they don’t become real friends until you spend lots of time with them. Better to have a circle of close friends than an army of acquaintances.
Max Kinghorn-Mills onWish Road South, finding power in understatement, making music as a trio and turning the everyday into songs.
There’s a beautiful contradiction at the heart of Hollow Hand’s new album, Wish Road South. Its melodies feel gentle and restrained, yet beneath them is something much bigger: songs that quietly open up and stay with you. There are words with meaning, observations that become stories, and moments that make the ordinary feel anything but ordinary.
We spoke with Max Kinghorn-Mills about making the record, letting Hollow Hand become a collective endeavour, the seemingly disconnected images of “Heavy Metal T-Shirt”, and what happens when an album finally leaves your hands and heads out on the road.
There is something almost contradictory about the songs onWish Road South: the melodies are often beautifully restrained and intimate, yet so many of them seem to contain a huge anthem trying to get out. I sometimes hear something in them that reminds me of the emotional lift of “The Whole of the Moon”. How do you manage to keep those melodies so small when they seem to have such enormous potential?
I don’t really have any plans when I’m writing, other than to follow what feels most inspiring. I suppose generally speaking I prefer ‘small’ music to anthem bands. The only exceptions are really in the world of heavy metal; I love being in the audience when everyone sings Metallica solos. I think less is generally more. I think I felt I had a fairly understated personality early on as a kid, whether I wanted that or not.
How didWish Road Southactually come together? Did the songs already feel like they belonged together when you started, or did the album gradually reveal itself as a record while you were making it?
Every time I make an album things feel different. This time I had many songs to choose from, I made demos for them, whittled them down, dropped a song if it wasn’t exciting me enough. That’s just the way things are, most people will tell you the same. It wasn’t until we started recording as a trio that we realised where the path was taking us. On other records I’ve sat and worked away on tracks for much longer, so I’d say Wish Road South was a much more dynamic experience.
You’ve described this as a different way of making an album, with Oliver Newton and Leo Clarke involved from the beginning and the three of you recording together as a band. What changed for you when Hollow Hand became more of a collective process rather than something you largely built yourself?
I started this band by myself in my basement flat at university. I spent 2 years hidden away ignoring phone calls, siphoning my dad’s record collection, discovering obscurities and recording demos. I’m a pretty solitary person most of the time; life just works better that way for me. I collaborated with 2 close friends on the album Star Chamber, but the others were very much on my own clock. Wish Road South is the result of a tight-knit trio who’ve spent a few years on the road together touring & backing other artists. Being in a band is hard, I just try to work out what I can do with the situation at hand, it’s always changing.
“Heavy Metal T-Shirt” has such an intriguing lyric, moving through seemingly disconnected images, memories and observations. There is something almost mysterious about the way the different pieces come together. What drew you to write the song in that way, and what do you feel holds it all together?
I never think about how I should write the song, it either happens or it doesn’t. I think if you’re being honest with yourself as a writer then the best songs will surface. When I was younger I used to focus on books I was reading, films, take other people’s much grander ideas and reinterpret them. More recently (and with this album), I’ve been much more interested in the day to day, the observations that you might call mundane. I was watching Kenneth Branagh with Judi Dench last night and he mentioned that “the ordinary is always the extraordinary”. I agree!
The album is out now, which means that for the first time these songs are no longer just yours. Other people are listening to them, interpreting them and forming opinions about them. Does that change the way you hearWish Road Southyourself, now that it has left your hands?
I’m pleased to have the album out there. In some ways it’s a relief but people forget that the next step is playing this music out in front of an audience, that’s very important & the decisions you made previously will stay with you for years. Many times I’ve found myself preparing to play an album live & finding it difficult to reinterpret the music. Just because a song worked well on a recording doesn’t mean it’ll be exciting on a stage, sometimes these can be very different crafts. Wish Road South is the first time where I’ve been able to really ‘road test’ some of the music (on various tours) leading up to the studio time. We’re leaving to tour the album for the first time in a couple of weeks, I’m in the studio today planning the set list and I’m really excited to get out!
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.
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.
The Nits have been one of the most innovative Dutch pop bands since the late seventies. Innovative not because they have spent nearly five decades chasing novelty, but because they have never stopped reinventing themselves. What began as a sound with strong echoes of Kraftwerk moved through New Wave and Art Pop and has, by now, arrived somewhere in a landscape of ambient storytelling.
In terms of creativity and carefully directed spontaneity, I sometimes think of Talking Heads and David Byrne, only without the funk. There is a similar refusal to settle into a recognizable formula, a similar sense that every album should somehow create its own little world. I could also point to Joe Jackson and his restless drive to explore new musical territory, but comparisons ultimately miss the point. Because what makes Nits so interesting is precisely that they don’t really sound like anybody else.
And perhaps that is because they may be the most European pop band there is.
Their music doesn’t have its roots primarily in American blues, jazz or rock & roll. Its foundations lie just as much in the European avant-garde, classical and art music, and, inevitably, The Beatles and The Kinks are part of the equation too, as they are the inspiration for all good pop bands. But even more than in the music, their European identity reveals itself in the lyrics. Nits songs are populated by people going to a play in Helsinki, taking a train to Switzerland, living behind the Dutch dikes, or discovering that in the Netherlands every little boy is expected to join a football club, including the ones who would rather not.
Those are just a few of the subjects that appear on In the Dutch Mountains, the 1987 album that marked the band’s commercial peak, at least here in the Netherlands, and perhaps its artistic peak as well. Because as much as I love many of their songs, I don’t think they ever made a better one than the album’s title track. Not necessarily because it is their most ambitious or adventurous song, but because everything that makes Nits unique seems to come together in those few minutes: the melody, the melancholy, the strangeness, the humour, the unmistakably European imagery and that peculiar ability to turn something very ordinary into something almost mythical.
This blog isn’t meant to be a complete history of Nits. There are plenty of places to find one, and after almost fifty years there would be far too much ground to cover anyway. I mainly want to share my enthusiasm for a band that, I am convinced, could appeal to a much larger audience than the one that currently knows them.
And I want to do that through three of my favourite Nits albums.
They are not necessarily the three albums I would recommend as an introduction to the band. If you don’t know Nits at all and have become curious, there is the excellent compilation Nits Hits. Better still, there is Urk, their magnificent 1989 live album. Start there and you get something close to a map of the Nits universe as it existed at the end of their most celebrated decade.
But my own route leads somewhere else.
TENT is the 1979 debut, and on it you hear a very different Nits to how they sound today, a band much more inspired by Kraftwerk than by the Sex Pistols. A few years ago, Nits decided to revisit their earliest records and perform the first few albums live in their entirety. During rehearsals they made an amusing discovery: it had seemed like a great idea, until they realised that the songs were considerably more complicated to play than they remembered.
And perhaps that tells you something important about TENT. The New Wave you hear on the surface may sound angular, immediate and relatively simple, but underneath it is music that is surprisingly intricate and layered. Nits were already thinking like arrangers rather than simply like a New Wave band. In that sense, TENT belongs alongside the records by those more ambitious bands that, while the seventies were still coming to an end, were already busy inventing the sound of the eighties.
And then, then comes Ting.
Released in 1992, Ting feels like the moment when Nits decided to remove almost everything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. Even the title sounds like the record. Ting: the sound of a raindrop, perhaps, or a bicycle passing by, but above all the sound of a piano key being struck.
The piano on this album is extraordinarily clear. On a first listen, its sound may occasionally bring to mind Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert or Philip Glass’s solo piano music. I don’t mean that Ting resembles either of them musically in any straightforward sense. It is the physical quality of the piano that creates the association: the touch of the keys, the space around the notes, the way every tone seems to exist for a moment on its own before disappearing.
And that space is essential to Ting. Where other bands might have filled it, Nits use it as an instrument. Songs seem to emerge from silence and retreat into it again. Small sounds suddenly matter. A note, a voice, a piece of percussion, a pause: everything has weight precisely because there is so little competing for your attention.
It is a remarkably restrained record made by a band that, by then, had already proved how much it could do. Ting is interesting because Nits chose instead to show how much they could leave out.
dA dA dA, from 1994, is probably Nits’ most solid album. And by solid, I mean solid in the way Crowded House’s songs and albums are solid: always good, always distinctive, seemingly effortless and built to last. If you stretch that comparison a little further, then Whales of Tadoussac is the album’s Don’t Dream It’s Over. But the difference between those two titles already tells you how limited the shelf life of that comparison is. Crowded House may be a useful reference point for the craftsmanship, but Nits remain far too peculiar to stay inside it for long.
That becomes increasingly clear in the album’s second half, where the band’s more adventurous, artistic side gradually takes over. The songs become less straightforward, the atmosphere stranger, and the record starts moving into territory that could only really belong to Nits. It is also here that Day and the Night, my personal favourite, appears, tucked away in the second half of what I consider one of the high points of their entire oeuvre.
For those of you who have somehow remained unaware of Nits until now, I wish you a very happy journey of discovery. There is almost fifty years of wonderful, strange and unmistakably European music waiting for you.
On Sargeant Pepper Grinder, Bleu turns grief into something bright, melodic and deeply human. The album is 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 long defined his songwriting, these are songs that don’t shy away from loss, but refuse to surrender to it either.
We spoke with Bleu about writing through grief, the strange kinship between sadness and power pop, obsessing over songcraft, and why Sargeant Pepper Grinder has ultimately become a memorial to friendship.
Sargeant Pepper Grinder feels like a very personal record. You describe it as an upbeat meditation on death and a celebration of friends who are no longer here. Was making the album a way of dealing with those losses, or did the songs simply become the place where those feelings naturally ended up?
Making this album was definitely a way of “dealing with” (processing, mourning, etc.) several very deep losses. Writing songs for my own artist project has always been a form of therapy for me, but many of these songs were a particularly palpable example of that. The recording process then became a way to commiserate, heal, and deepen connections with my friends who are still here, many of whom were also very close to Ducky and/or Alex “Scootch” Scutro.
Power Pop has always had this wonderful ability to hide sadness inside bright melodies and beautiful harmonies. On this album, though, the emotions feel particularly close to the surface. How do you find the balance between making something musically joyful and allowing the lyrics to be genuinely painful or vulnerable?
That seeming dichotomy is a hallmark of some power-pop that I’ve always loved. Just as humor helps many of us get through painful experiences, exuberant and tuneful music can help lift us from the valleys of crushing loss. I’ve also learned through therapy that two conflicting feelings can legitimately exist at the same time, and I think that juxtaposition brings a deeper meaning to life. But the main reason this album contains so much of that kind of thing is because I wanted to write music that Ducky and Scootch would’ve liked, and neither gravitated to sad-sack songs!
You’ve always been an incredibly melodic songwriter, but on this album the melodies sometimes seem almost deliberately at odds with what you’re singing about. Do you ever start with the emotional weight of a lyric and then look for a melody that gives it some lightness, or does the music usually come first?
When I write for “BLEU” (“me songs”) I almost always start with lyrics, usually a title with a concept, starting with the hook and moving on from there. In the case of this record though, that was obviously in service of conveying some pretty heavy emotions. I think “melodic songwriting” is just part of my DNA, but there’s certainly plenty thought (craft) that goes into melodic shape and in particular melodic-rhythm, and these songs were no exception. Even when I’m writing something heavy and the emotions are flowing, I can’t help but work the songcraft.
You produced and mixed the entire album yourself. Did keeping that process largely in your own hands matter to you, especially with material this personal?
Yes and no. I’m very open to collaboration, and worked with many talented songwriters, musicians, engineers, and Atmos mixers on this album, most of whom I think would agree that they weren’t particularly “over-produced.” But there was no way I wasn’t going to obsess over these songs, and producing and mixing it myself meant I wasn’t unnecessarily bothering other people (haAa!)
Looking across the songs on Sargeant Pepper Grinder, there’s a real sense of finding joy in people, memories and small moments. Did writing these songs change the way you look at those things, or perhaps make you appreciate them differently?
I look at this record now as a memorial. I truly wanted to create a tangible and (hopefully) long lasting tribute to Ducky and Scootch, as well as a heartfelt and healing expression of grief for myself and others. But yes, working on this record was very much a path to creating joy, memories, and small-moments – with my friends and family who are still around.
