The mixing of our debut album is progressing quite rapidly at this point. We’re about 75% done now! With three more songs to go and some minor tweaking on the rest we’ll soon be ready for mastering. We’ll give a more thorough update with track listing and such soon.

I hope y’all have had a great holiday and beginning of the new decade. We’ve certainly recharged our batteries over the past month and are at the moment focused on finishing mixing the debut album. In mid-March the songs are being sent to mastering so by then it has to be finished. Our hope is to have the album out in May at the latest. 2010 is a good year to release a debut, no?

Keep checking this space for updates!

Stay safe, stay fake.

Yesterday we spent the evening laying down guitar tracks for the three new songs we started recording this weekend. I had quite a good evening I must say. For this session I had bought myself a brand new external sound card as well as a Rode microphone, which apparently sounds quite amazing. Haven’t tried those mics myself but according to popular opinion they rival mics twice the price. Anyway, so it was fun doing the guitar parts, switching between my Fender Telecaster/Vox and Hagström Viking/Peavey Classic setups. Doing the overdubs in your own rehearsal space makes things that much easier, and it sounds just as good as it did in the studio we worked in previously. Tomorrow we’re continuing. Maybe I can get done with all the guitar parts this week. That would be sweet.

As Morty previously stated, the drum tracking this weekend went really well. Tonight we continue with the rest, first up being guitars. It’s usually what takes up the most time so it’s best to just go ahead and get it done as soon as possible so we can move forward. The plan is to have all the tracking done within a month’s time.

First off I want to thank those of you who showed up for the gig. The indoor festival venue was kind of tricky to find, (being, as it was, an outdoor festival) resulting in a frustrated flow of text messages and missed calls on the cell during and after the show. In any case, we had a real blast and felt that we really managed to represent ourselves well on the biggest festival in Sweden.

Besides yours truly, a bunch of other bands played too of course. I had the pleasure of attending some good gigs, especially The Wildhearts and Faith No More. I first saw Faith back in 1998 on their very last tour when they visited the Lollipop Festival in Stockholm. That gig was not very good, the band looking painfully tired of touring, lacking the energy in the performance and output. This time was a lot different. It was one of the best live shows I’ve seen. I was amazed at how good a frontman Mike Patton really is, with his mezmerizing gaze and wild bursts of energy, frantically waving a white cane in the air whilst switching back and forth between opera-like vocals and growling. If you get a chance to see them on their reunion tour, regardless of whether you’ve heard them before or not, take it!

The big disappointment at this festival was, sadly, Chris Cornell. Oh, how far the mighty have fallen… I still don’t get why the f*** he decided to throw his career away and start experimenting with Timbaland. Something is really very wrong. The band backing him isn’t the best either, despite the fact that they’re all skilled musicians. There’s just very little chemistry on stage. The magical moments are sparse, but at least they’re there during “Spoonman” and “Black Hole Sun”, and Chris is definitely lucky he’s got that voice of his, otherwise I’m sure I would have left during the middle part of the show where he only served new crap and some boring Audioslave songs.

Anyhow, all in all this was one of the best festivals I’ve had the pleasure of attending. The last night after the last show most of the bands and artists gathered in the backstage area for a few beers and socializing. So Morty and I didn’t get to bed until about 5.30 in the morning - some nights you just don’t want to end! It was a good thing we had to drive back to Stockholm in the morning, thus preventing me to devour excessive amounts of alcohol and managing to avoid hangover altogether.

So, what’s next? Some well deserved time off, maybe some rehearsing and perhaps I will get into the mood of songwriting again. Now I’m off for an afternoon beer in the sun. Cheerio!

The next must-have in this powerpop album collection is Jellyfish’s masterpiece “Spilt Milk” from 1993. I only just got into the band a few years back, having missed them completely throughout my youth for some reason. This is a true gem, and the last of the two albums that Jellyfish released before they disbanded in 1994. It includes the epic song “Joining a Fan Club” which is a tribute to the music fans, collecting 8×10s and putting up posters on the wall. The song is built up in the same way as “Stairway to Heaven” and “Bohemian Rhapsody”, consisting of many different parts merged together in one huge masterpiece.

This is yet another album you’ll be hard-pressed to find any flaws on. Andy Sturmer (lead singer/drummer/main songwriter) worked meticulously for a long time to finish it, at a tremendous cost for the record company. But the result speaks for itself. Tunes like “Bye, bye, bye”, “Sebrina, Paste and Plato”, “Glutton of Sympathy”, “New Mistake” and “The Ghost at Number One” hit you like a brick in the head with intricate arrangements and crisp production. For those of you who are vocal harmony junkies, you will find that Jellyfish will give The Beach Boys and The Beatles a run for their money any day. Now run down to the record store and get a tangible copy of this album, you won’t regret it. Happy listening kids!

Here’s a live performance of “Joining a Fan Club”.

Right now I’m redescovering Pearl Jam. It’s one of my all time favorite bands and I’ve followed them since I was in junior high. They were the band that got me hooked on the Seattle scene that subsequently led me onto powerpop through The Posies. Last month they reissued their monumental debut album “Ten”, repackaged, remixed and remastered. I always thought that their first album sounded a bit dated, unlike their other albums that have withstood the test of time a lot better. Well, they seem to have felt the same as they brought in Brenden O’Brien (who engineered and mixed their finest albums - Vs., Vitalogy, No Code and Yield) to work through the old master tapes and give the songs a well needed facelift. Do youselves a favor and check out “Ten - Redux”. I’d recommend getting the edition that comes with the previously unreleased MTV Unplugged on a bonus DVD. I taped it on my VCR back when it was first aired and watched that ’til my eyes bled! To this day, Pearl Jam are still relevant and they keep releasing albums that are interesting - something that can hardly be said for most bands that came out in the early ’90s.

The next album on the list is another one that changed my life and the way I perceived music. Will Owsley is the founder of a legendary powerpop trio called The Semantics, which featured Ringo Starr’s son Zak Starkey on drums. Their sole album Powerbill was only released in Japan and the band never got the break they sought for. You might think that this is the album I’m going to talk about - which I could have gone on about at length - but I’m going to focus on Owsley’s first solo album Owsley released in 1999.

The story as I’ve heard it is that he recorded this album in his home studio, which he financed by touring with Amy Grant. When he started shopping around for a deal a lot of labels liked what they heard but wanted him to re-record the album to make it sound “cooler” or something like that. Owsley refused and waited until he found the label that wanted to put it out as it was, and he was rewarded for his persistence with a grammy nomination for “best engineering”. Ain’t that great?

Anyhow, the album in itself is a masterpiece. Packed with powerpop gems, full of energy and beatle-esque songwriting, it had a great impact on me when I first heard it a year after it came out and inspired me in so many ways, changing the way I write music. “Oh No The Radio” might be one of the coolest opening tracks of all time, and “Coming Up Roses” is a song every songwriter would wish they’d written!

Unfortunately, only one track is available for listening on Owsley’s MySpace. But it’s the beautiful ballad “Sentimental Favorite” so there’s really no reason to complain. I’ve been searching YouTube for any kind of Owsley or Semantics clip withouth luck. If you readers happen to stumble upon a clip, let me know.

By many considered to be the very first album of the genre, this next essential powerpop album is a true gem that everyone should be aware of. The importance of Big Star’s debut album “#1 Record” from 1972 can hardly be ignored, influenced, as it has, bands like The Posies (whom I focused the last issue on), Teenage Fanclub and Matthew Sweet to mention a few. Big Star is a band that didn’t get its deserved recognition back when they started out in the early 70’s, but has gained some interest in later years - much like Nick Drake.

This is yet another of those albums that, in my opinion, doesn’t have a single weakness. Not a bad track. It’s got the real rocker tracks like “Don’t Lie To Me”, “In the Street” and “Feel”, as well as beautiful ballads such as “Thirteen” and “The Ballad of El Goodo”, which might be one of the most beautiful songs ever written.

Big Star disbanded in the mid-70’s but reformed in 1993, adding Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow from The Posies to the lineup. They also contributed to the 2005 album “In Space” which is a fine piece of work, although it doesn’t even come close to the debut.

Here’s a YouTube clip from The Tonight Show with the new lineup performing “In the Street” (which you might recognize from That 70’s Show, for which Cheap Trick recorded their own version)

The second album I want you to check out may very well be the one album that has influenced me the most. It’s the phenomenal third album from The Posies entitled “Frosting on the Beater”, released in 1993. I’d say that this is the very album that got me hooked on powerpop in the first place, and in many ways “Frosting” defines the genre for me. It’s impossible to find a weakness on the album, since all of the songs are true gems in their own right.

My favorite song on the album and one of my favorite songs of all time is “Solar Sister”. To this day I cannot seem to tire of it. Actually, it’s hard to tire of any of the songs, but other “must-listens” are “Definite Door”, “Dream All Day”, “Flavor of the Month”, and the hauntingly beautiful closer “Coming Right Along” with the eerie C-tuning on the guitar that I spent a whole afternoon in High School trying to figure out.

These past couple of years I’ve had the pleasure to get to know the frontmen of the band - Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer - and the two still produce the most amazing music, both as The Posies and separately. If you start to delve into their back catalogue you’ll find some of the greatest music written during the past fifteen years or so.

Here’s a YouTube clip of “Solar Sister” that I just found. The harmonies on this song are absolutely killer!

And here’s the album cover: