{"id":3104,"date":"2015-12-05T14:56:26","date_gmt":"2015-12-05T20:56:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/?p=3104"},"modified":"2015-12-05T14:56:26","modified_gmt":"2015-12-05T20:56:26","slug":"modern-pop-masters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/?p=3104","title":{"rendered":"Modern Pop Masters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Anyone who&#8217;s been following my blog jottings for a while knows my enthusiasm for prog, and occasional, aggravated dismissal of modern pop (and indie). Despite that, I halfheartedly try to fight off old crank syndrome, and engage with stuff that&#8217;s going on now. I know my dream of a full-on prog-minded revival is forever off the table, even with taste makers like Tom Scharpling half jokingly championing groups like King Crimson and Soft Machine. Still, it&#8217;s nice to come across contemporary music makers who can achieve high levels of piano\/guitar pop in the Beatles, Beach Boys vein. <\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;ll share two guys that make me feel good, if you want some guitar\/piano pop to listen to:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nElSA2jfzWI\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>BC Camplight is an interesting dude. He hails from my hometown (Philly). We have a lot of personal connections. He was part of the local indie men&#8217;s vocal group The Silver Ages, and is a remarkable solo artist. Everyone who met him was always blown away by the ease of his musicianship. Everyone also ended up hating him, and he was basically run out of town for stealing band equipment and pawning it off for gambling money(?)! Now he lives in England and puts out an album every 8-ish years. <\/p>\n<p>Back in the day I used to write him emails or try to talk to him at shows because I thought (and still think) he was really one of the best pop songwriters around. He sits somewhere in that West Coast dreamy pop of the 70&#8217;s and the white soul sound of Upper Darby (Hall &#038; Oats). Every once in a while he tries to &#8220;rock&#8221; and I don&#8217;t like that stuff as much. I like his baroque pop falsetto stylings. <\/p>\n<p>He doesn&#8217;t get much talk in the U.S. but I think he&#8217;s doing alright in Europe. That&#8217;s my impression anyway. He&#8217;s pretty open about his personal struggles. <\/p>\n<p>I was going to talk about Ryan Power, but now I think I remember talking about him already on my website. Take a look in my archives if you&#8217;re interested. Fuck it, I&#8217;ll post a song of his here, who cares:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bVo1yjU-2-Q\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I also wrote Ryan Power an email about 2 years ago, to tell him how much I appreciated his recent two albums. I thought maybe he was digging on Godley &#038; Creme, but he&#8217;d never heard of them.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IQr6FYFEjI8\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p> In interviews he name drops some 80&#8217;s R&#038;B groups that I&#8217;ve never heard of. He&#8217;d also said that he&#8217;s a fan of Ariel Pink, but I think he&#8217;s &#8220;better&#8221;. That&#8217;s sort of weird to say because I dig a lot of Ariel Pink. I thought half of Pom Pom was pretty great. The track &#8220;White Freckles&#8221; is maybe the best art pop track of 2015.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Hy6-bK2HUyw\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anyone who&#8217;s been following my blog jottings for a while knows my enthusiasm for prog, and occasional, aggravated dismissal of modern pop (and indie). Despite that, I halfheartedly try to fight off old crank syndrome, and engage with stuff that&#8217;s going on now. I know my dream of a full-on prog-minded revival is forever off [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3104"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3105,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3104\/revisions\/3105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}