ARTIST: The Power Cords
TITLE: Modern Day Noise
LABEL: The Power Cords
GENRE: Rock
TIME: 37:22 min
SIZE:  59,2 MB
RIP DATE: 11-08-2006
RELEASE DATE: Mar-30-2006
WEBSITE: n/a

Track List:

01. Modern Oldie Radio                         02:34
02. Melissa                                    02:55
03. Bunsen Burner                              03:14
04. Calypse                                    04:04
05. After The Show                             03:02
06. Swan                                       02:27
07. Plastic Sentry                             02:54
08. Dear Condi                                 02:38
09. 21st Century Girl                          03:18
10. Ao Jenny                                   03:44
11. Superhero                                  03:10
12. Goodbye Polly Goodbye                      03:22

Release Notes:

Glancing at The Power Cordsf debut album, onefs
eye moves past the flickering television screen on
the cover to the subversive words imprinted coyly
along the album's spine: gFile Under: Post Post
Rock.h Naturally we wonder, are these guys kidding?
The record plays. The answer, of course, is yes.

This young Los Angeles quartet serves up infectious
confections of irresistibly digestible sound,
layered generously with lovingly distorted guitars,
tight harmonies, and those beautiful little
serendipitous touches in songwriting and production
that distinguish mere competent performance from
musical revelation. The twelve songs on the LP
harken back to a time when surfer girls caught waves
in glorious Technicolor, when Kinks and Zombies and
Turtles werenft yet extinct.

The Power Cords are the inheritors and stewards ?
self-consciously so ? of a long, illustrious
tradition. They are fervent, pious believers in the
elusive and mythical Pop Song. They are Beatle-
thumpers, if you will. Above all they remind us
again what the first and most indispensable role of
the pop song is, has been, and must always be so
long as pop will retain its vitality: to liberate a
listener for two or three minutes from the tedious
concerns of daily life.

To this end their lyrics blur the line between
cheeky and downright whimsical, eschewing
melodramatic posturing in favor of an incandescent
landscape populated by science babes and
superheroes. They tell simple stories to deceptively
breezy melodies, the sort of friendly tunes that
find their way back into onefs consciousness in the
middle of a shower or a long elevator ride. And they
wrap it all in a shell of playful egotism, branding
themselves the vanguard of rock evolution and the
present and future arbiters of musical relevance.

Still, their faux pretense is more than just an easy
laugh at the expense of insufferable phonies. The
Power Cords take their pop inheritance very
seriously. Their talk of gpost-post rockh reflects
a powerful and constant awareness of the history of
pop, commitment to the canon that they shamelessly
espouse, and steadfast opposition to the ego-serving
artifices that have weighed down the pop vessel. In
a music scene filled with slow-working poisons and
boring placebos, their songs are Flintstones
chewable vitamins: colorful, cartoony, healthy, and
delicious.

Listening to The Power Cords leads one to conclude
with no small relief that post-post rock sounds a
lot like, well... rock. The Power Cords are
proclaiming earnestly that wefve moved past the
dead-end pseudo-intellectualism of gpost-rock.h
The Power Cords aim to reclaim the soul of pop.
Itfs a lofty goal, but their craft is strong enough
to quell our knee-jerk cynicism.

Ultimately, The Power Cords are making the case for
pop. Theyfre persuasive. Listen to the music, come
see them play. Theyfll make the skeptic sing. Just
try, for a moment, to suspend your disbelief.

-Bill Higgins
