New Wave Outpost Forum

been listening to alot of 20/20 lately as well as The Plimsouls and Knack and was wondering if there was still a fan base for good melodic power pop? Any new bands in the same vein?

"You just pick a chord, go twang, and you've got music." ~ Sid Vicious

The only American power pop to hold my interest is Single Bullet Theory. A great band who were treated badly by CBS.

Over here being in a power pop band was the musical equivalent of being on the SS Titanic. Sure, there were the occasional hit singles by Tonight, The Jags, Pinkees etc. but I don't remember any of them having a hit album due to the fact that most of them were patchy at best.

My faves are The Pinkees, The Dazzlers and The Yachts.

Not sure if there's much of a commercial fan-base, but there are numerous blogs and some small record labels which are devoted to the genre.

There was also a power-pop top song survey with some good bands and videos listed in this forum topic, i think within the last 12 months. [ Update: here it is - http://www.nwoutpost.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=33255 ]

Here are some blogs that I've followed at one point or another:

http://powerpopoverdose.blogspot.com/
http://wilfullyobscure.blogspot.com/
http://www.totalmusicgeek.com/search/label/power%20pop
http://icecreamman1967.blogspot.se/
http://croydonmunicipal.blogspot.com/
http://www.popgeekheaven.com/ (not responding atm)
http://www.notlame.com/ (label which has gone under)

FC -- Any chance you could post some material from those bands?

Woodland, if you like American NW power pop, you should check out The Producers (if you don't already listen to them). They're more pop than power, but I think they're catchier than 20/20.

I haven't kept up with power pop, but it was big in the 90s: Matthew Sweet, The Posies, Teenage Fanclub, The Lemonheads, and myriad "punk pop" bands (Blink 182 ... retch). I don't keep up with contemporary music much, but I'd say Nada Surf is pretty good, especially "The Weight Is A Gift" (2005).

p.s. These days, every tween show my daughters watch has a power pop theme song. Funny how things come around, eh?

You can't get more power pop than this song
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That's just a few that come to mind at the moment.

The band Free Energy has been mining the power-pop/classic rock vein pretty successfully on their two albums, 2010's 'Stuck on You' and 2013's 'Love Sign'.

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It's not the rickenbacker-driven jangle-power-pop of the 70's and 80's, but still fun.