Top 25 of 2008: #5 Twilight by the Baskervilles

Image of the Baskervilles from 1-UP PR

#5 Twilight by the Baskervilles (Secret Crush Records)

Am I immolating my "indie cred" by including a band from the power-pop ghetto in my Top 10? Probably, but I'm not sure what to do about my love of power pop. It's a genre that really has kind of been ghettoized in recent years, the popularity of anomalies like Fountains of Wayne notwithstanding. These days, it seems like all power pop musicians look like record-store-owning burnouts (and their wives) - see above. You have to go to special websites like NotLame.com to find out about the scads of power-pop records that are produced by struggling bands in local/regional scenes. Frankly, it's only by chance that I found out about Twilight at all.

I should say now that this record has nothing to do with the highly successful vamp-tween novels born out of the erotic dreams of a Mormon housewife. The album Twilight started out as a singles project by the Harlem-based Baskervilles. They put up a new one-song single on their website about every month for about a year and a half - the songs are all still there if you want to listen to the whole thing. I'm sure I've mentioned my love of singles clubs on this blog, so you may not be shocked that such a ploy drew my attention. I found myself coming to the blog on a regular basis to see if a new single had been thrown up yet. It helped that the singles were all produced by Mitch Easter, a power-pop musician (Let's Active) and well-known producer (REM, Pavement, etc.) When the band decided to dress up the songs a little at the end of the project and release them as an album, I was primed to hear the completed project (in spite of the inexplicably terrible cover art - what happened to the awesome art concepts from the singles series?)

The album is a lot of fun, the kind that makes me wonder why power pop has been relegated to the outskirts of music discourse in recent years. The Baskervilles are by turns wistful ("Where Did My Summer Go?"), sleazy ("Sweet and Sour"), and gleeful ("A Little More Time"), and the songs display a good variety of sounds, touching on chamber-pop, jangle-rock, and shoegaze. The vocals are strong if a little faceless, and the singles-collection approach makes for a consistent album with a very strong second half.

"A Little More Time" was the seventh single of the Twilight single series, but it takes the opening-track position on the album. Starting with a jumpy string trio riff, the song is one of the most joyous I heard all year. There's not that much to it, but the clap-along bridge and harmonies make for an unbeatable power-pop formula for people who like that kind of thing. And there's nothing wrong with being one of those people. I don't think that power pop will ever be the "cool" sound again, but... well, I don't really have a good way to end that sentence.

"A Little More Time" by the Baskervilles