by Morgan Troper (@mo_troper)
I saw another one just the other day: a special new band that called themselves “power pop.” As the TV Tropes entry for power pop astutely points out, there’s an insidious trend of pop-punk bands who sound like Cartel self-identifying as power pop, besmirching the genre’s good name and estranging spouseless guys pushing 40 who want quarantine to end so they can go back to manning the Rutles kiosk at the Naperville Beatlefest.
Songs From Another Life, the latest album from Spanish/Swedish supergroup The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness, is one of the first Bandcamp-core albums in recent memory to properly embody power pop’s platonic ideals. The ‘60s rock influence here isn’t merely mediated through a more modern influence—say, Weezer, or the Motion City Soundtrack album produced by Adam Schlesinger. The comparisons to Dinosaur Jr. and Sugar in the band’s press kit make for appetizing RIYL tag fodder, but Songs From Another Life exists in an alternate reality where ‘60s worship and dimed-out, alt-rock sensibilities never cross-pollinated. For the most part, that’s a good thing.
The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness also smartly value brevity—Songs From Another Life runs at ten tracks in under half an hour, and the songs themselves are as lean and economical as an early Monkees tune. Opening track “I Don’t Mind” is a sub-two minute masterpiece that is essentially just one long chorus, with a twisting vocal melody that evokes distant, sepia-hued memories of holding hands with someone on the way to a house show. It’s gorgeous and inexplicably melancholic, and like all the best power pop songs, those qualities are offset by droll sound bites like, “you said you miss me, but you know I don’t mind.”
Of course, the problem with so much “real” contemporary power pop is that it is too prescriptivist, which is maybe not surprising for a genre of guitar music whose adherents consider the 1910 Fruitgum Company and Bay City Rollers high art. This aspect of the genre is so notorious that it was the focus of one of Best Show’s most enduring bits. Power pop has some of the most precious and humorless fans of any substantial rock fandom.
The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness aren’t a Cuban-heels-and-vintage-Wings-shirt-type power pop band. Their use of jangling Rickenbackers and close vocal harmonies isn’t preening or indicative of a pathological nostalgia. Even when Songs From Another Life veers into “retro” territory—most notably on “Play (On My Mind),” which I can’t believe wasn’t in That Thing You Do!, and Byrds soundalike “How I Really Feel”—the pastiche feels constructive and self-aware. All of these songs would still sound great without the gloriously ear-splitting jangle—just not as great.
What is perhaps most impressive is how The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness have managed to carve out a relatively singular identity despite power pop’s conservative parameters; for a brief second, “Rose Tinted Glasses” sounds like a Grand Prix era Teenage Fanclub cover before it quickly develops into something totally unique. Elsewhere, The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness flaunt their indie bona fides—which is to be expected from a band named after a Feelies song—like on closer “In Between,” which sounds like Wilco rewriting Elliott Smith’s “Independence Day” for Summerteeth. It’s been a banner couple of years for classicist power pop: 2019 gave us Yeah is What We Have’s Through the Window, whose cover art is eerily similar to Songs From Another Life’s, and last year saw the release of 2nd Grade’s Tusk-esque tour de force Hit to Hit. A brand new international pop overthrow is afoot and The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness are at the vanguard.