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Power Pop Plus: Top 20 Albums of 2020
John M. Borack chooses 20 of the finest melodically-charged releases from last year
Author:
Mar 11, 2021
To be blunt, 2020 was a sh tshow in so many ways, but at least there was a bright spot as far as music as concerned: the overall quality of melodically-charged releases was quite high indeed. Here are
Power Pop Plus s top 20 albums from The Year the World Was Put on Pause, with a few extras tossed in at the end.
1.
BY MARCY SHORTUSE – Though she be but little, she is fierce.
The words may have come from Shakespeare, but they describe Jam “Noy” Vollmer exactly. Once you met her, you never forgot her. Once she entered a room, you forgot what it was like before she was there.
Noy left this earth on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021, and her passing left a void that could not, and will not, be filled. Her radiant smile, her eyes that were filled with laughter in one moment and an all-business intensity the next, her diminutive frame, her never-ending love for her family and friends … they were all Noy trademarks.
What I d like to do right now is go to Arundel and buy a lemon yum yum from the LG Café in the town centre, which snobbish locals are trying to close.
I d like to drink to the health and wealth of the café owners with one of their cups of piping hot chocolate and tell them not to let the burghers grind them down.
I d like to toast their muffins and curse those who would pan their cakes for no other reason than freshly baked, cherry-topped, hard-glazed snobbery.
George Johnson, 43, and his partner Lily Trunfull, 29, have run the cafe and cake shop for two years.
Power Pop Plus: A Look Back at 2020.and More
John M. Borack explores some of the best of 2020 and a brand new release from Matthew Sweet
Author:
Sweet s fifteenth solo effort is one of his finest in recent memory. Like Paul McCartney s
III,
Catspaw is a grower rather than an instant knockout: songs such as Give a Little, Challenge the Gods, Come Home, and At a Loss will sneak up on you and provide a guitar-fueled gut punch given half a chance. Speaking of which,
Catspaw is most definitely a full-on guitar record: Sweet handles all the six-string action here and does a helluva job, with the beefy sound harkening back to Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine s work on Sweet s 1990s releases. (Sweet handles all instrumentation himself here, save for longtime cohort Ric Menck s typically rock-steady drums.) Only one of the dozen tunes clocks in at longer than four minutes, and the relative brevity of the songs allows Sweet to say what he has to say, tear through a kickin guita