Recension av Planetarian Ranger

Chris K - Gods Of Music - 2001-06-06

Betyg: 4,5/10

If I could give a negative score for this band not providing a link to their site I would. For those who read this review, please do not deep link a direct song download to a song … nuff said.

The idea of power pop goes back over thirty years. In it’s creation, bands like the Raspberries wrote and performed songs of three minutes in length or less. Later bands like Cheap Trick, the Knack and others took the form for themselves and generated hit singles that were radio friendly and genuinely "poppy" in appeal and construct. During the past decade other bands have also worked to revitalize this oldest of jangly, primarily guitar driven music. Lately, bands like Wilco and spin offs like SWAG, which features former or current members of Cheap Trick, the Mavericks and Wilco, are once again working to bring power pop back to prominence. Spiral Stairs seems to want to lay claim to this new era in power pop. Unfortunately they miss the mark on several fronts.

Power Pop is identified by several key factors, one of which is vocal harmonies. In the case of Spiral Stairs, no harmonies exist. Instead, the lead vocalist appears to be more inclined to draw from the pop punk tradition, and even at that only manages an approximation of the kind of texture, angst, and vocal prowess most often associated with that genre.

Another area where power pop excels and this song fails is in the content of the song. Lyrically, "Planetarian Ranger" is intended for a teen audience that gets its kicks out of saying "f**k" throughout a song. Phrases like "When I say don’t you f**k with him cuz he simply rules," is hardly the kind of lyrical content that would endear itself to a mainstream pop audience. Pop is jangly and fun, it embraces a certain level of naivete and innocence. It is part the Who and part the Beach Boys, and always fun. That’s the whole point of it all, fun.

On the upside, this song could probably be re-arranged and re-produced for a band like Blink 182, or the Offspring and turned into a strong B cut on one of their albums. As it stands, this band lacks the requisite polish to pull it off themselves.

Anther fairly positive note is the production on this piece. While surely not up to professional grade standards, it is, nonetheless, an admirable "locals" effort. The vocals are placed nicely up front and the overall finished product leads me to believe that someone with decent ears was behind the boards.

Bottom line: this one is a yawner. It’s more of a pop punk alternative than pure power pop, with a vocalist who in a few years time, with the proper attention, could probably amount to an average sounding contemporary pop vocalist. Not real bad, not real good … keep at it boys.

Tillbaka