Indie pop, like you love...

I'm in a dreamy indie pop mood today. What can I say? Maybe I've reached that certain age...

No. 1 Fan was Majesty Crush's best single, arguably. It's odd to think of them as an Ann Arbor band, but they were, back when the early '90s were full of dreamy Anglophilia. I really feel for those bands that existed on the alternative scene before grunge exploded, sucking the rest of the air from the room. Still, this wafting bit of confection is a pretty good testament to the band. Today we have Wolf Eyes and Saturday Looks Good To Me. Then we had Majesty Crush and Big Chief.

I also dug out a sampler from Pop Culture Press; their first, in fact, from 2006. The Great Summer Pop sampler included a couple of tracks that I haven't seen elsewhere and that heralded great things for the mag. Tracks like Snowly by Boyracer, which is really excellent strummed pop (and a sound that I don't think many pop bands today have surpassed like you might have expected). Also included was Irrigation Man by Spoon, off of the All The Negatives ep that I don't think is still in print. Shame, really. This, along with a mixtape from a co-worker and finding their first album for $3(!!!) at Encore within a week of its release made me a fan. Sure, they've hit on thinner times (I didn't think Gimme Fiction was all that good), but they've got a fairly decent store of excellent albums. The last track that I'm gonna feature from the sampler was one that ended up being the source of a lot of disappointment: Cherry Bomb by Magnapop. It's this fantastic girlpop burner, replete with a great hook and sharp drums, but a) despite being promised as included on their album, it was available as an import only track, and b) the actual album kinda blew. Tuscadero wiped the floor with 'em then... But still, Cherry Bomb is a favorite of mine still, especially on mixtapes where I lay it in right next to Joan Jett's congruently titled (though quite different) song.

And the final track? Well, the girlfriend and I saw this movie called Hard Rock Zombies, featuring a band called Holy Moses. Apparently, there's a German band with the same name, but that's not them (and Holy Moses is only their name in the movie. The band was actually called Silent Rage, one of the dumbest buttrock names ever). Through the magic of the internet, someone had ripped the tracks, including the Satanic chant recorded on 4-track that turns everyone into hard rock zombies. The quality's poor, and the song is goofy, but here you go: Morte Ascendere (which isn't just the title, but also the whole words to the song).