Fifteen years ago, Fountains of Wayne released their eponymous debut LP, a near-perfect set of twelve power-pop songs supercharged with clever lyrics about life on both sides of the bridges and tunnels which connect New York and New Jersey. The second single from that record, “Sink to the Bottom,” managed to turn the line “I just wanna…” into a powerful B chorus.

Even this many years later, it’s impossible to hear Jersey quartet Big Troubles turn that same phrase into the hook of “Misery” without thinking of their musical forebears. It isn’t just the repetition of the lyric–it has as much to do with the fact that Big Troubles tap into the mid-1990s musical zeitgeist, that post-grunge, slacker rock era when there was no shortage of excellent bands getting signed to major labels, a Superdrag for every Superchunk.

“Misery,” the second song on the band’s debut, Romantic Comedy, has an earnestness and a strain of melancholy absent from the FoW catalog, but the core promise to the listener is essentially the same: memorable melodies flanked by smart guitar parts. Although Big Troubles play it subdued, there is clearly an affinity here for the classic power-pop sensibility admired by fellow tri-staters Free Energy. Where those two sounds come together–at the intersection of 120 Minutes and Big Star–is where you’ll find Big Troubles.

Click here to listen to Romantic Comedy on Spotify.

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It’s A King Thing “Old Hobbies”

Yo La Tengo “Periodically Double or Triple”

Spiral Stairs “Maltese Terrier”

If Pink Floyd hadn’t insisted on applying the phrase “the delicate sound of thunder” to their own music when they came up with it, they could have loaned it out to Los Angeles sextet RACES. On “Big Broom,” RACES more than live up to the description by mixing rafter-shaking atmospheric rumbling with ethereal wispiness like a thunderstorm raging in Fairyland.

The song kicks off with a brooding bass line and sketchy guitar part that for the first section of “Big Broom” places it in the dark psychedelic territory of bands like The Black Angels and The Warlocks. Then pianist Breanna Wood drops in to add a soaring harmony to Wade Ryff’s lead vocals and it’s like a ray of sunlight suddenly cutting through the dark clouds. The ominous roar of the song continues on its way, but Wood’s voice slowly moves more and more to the fore until by the end she’s on equal footing with Ryff and “Big Broom” concludes with the feeling that the clouds have parted for good.

Crafting a song that simultaneously stomps and tiptoes requires a band with a sure sense of dynamics, and Races rise to that challenge with “Big Broom.” They sacrifice neither roar nor soar, but strike a perfect balance between the two. “Big Broom” is like a storm that batters everyone below it with hailstones, then paints the sky with a rainbow to make up for it.

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Vanish Valley “Races”

Color of Clouds “Brother”

In his day job as a political writer (for the libertarian publication Reason), Virginia’s Meredith Bragg sees the unpleasantness of the current state of American affairs up close. That perspective seems to color “Birds of North America,” the lovely but troubling first single from Bragg’s third album, Nest.

On “Birds of North America,” Bragg paints a portrait of a nation where to be a public figure is to be viewed as a target like a duck in duck season. Whether you’re someone running for president or a teenaged starlet who simply wants to behave like every other teenager in the country (i.e. appallingly), there’s someone else who has you in their sights and is just itching to blow you out of the sky. The strong ones will survive, the rest will end up roasted and served up for consumption on TMZ.

Bragg seems especially aware that it’s his own profession driving the hunting frenzy. Lines like “Take a shot and aim for center / Take a shot with ink-stained fingers” underline the media’s complicity in making sure that no ambition – be it for fame or public service or whatever – will go unpunished in the America of today.

What saves the song from being an absolute downer of a civics lesson is the fact that it’s a pretty gorgeous piece of work. It begins with acoustic guitar plucking out a nice little melodic figure, which is then overlaid with cello sawing out the same pattern. Bragg’s vocals are laid-back, with a subtle female harmony lending him support until the song climaxes with a humming drone laid over the top of the entire thing.

It’s a pleasantly mesmerizing four minutes of music that reports a nasty reality, yet still seems to maintain a hopeful outlook. Which only makes sense – if Meredith Bragg is able to make a topic like the blood sport which passes for discourse in America these days into a song like “Birds of North America,” there’s got to be some hope for the rest of us.

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September & October 2011 MP3 Rewind

Jogger “In America”

Teen blogger phenom Tavi recently started Rookie, a new website slavishly devoted to dissecting the late ‘80s / early ‘90s concept of the female adolescent (think Clare Danes as Angela Chase abutting Morrissey rubbing shoulders with Laura Palmer). Even though Letting Up Despite Great Faults is sometimes a trio of guys who left their teen years in the dust awhile back, “Teenage Tide” fits right in with Rookie’s milieu.

“Teenage Tide” is a pastiche of basic Jesus and Mary Chain bompity-bomp rhythms overlaid with the wispiest vocals this side of Stuart Murdoch. The song’s pace quickens during its final minute, building tension, as the guitar takes hold and lifts the listener with it, as if it was scoring the end of a John Hughes film.

Lyrically “Teenage Tide” captures the angst that makes those transitive years so nebulous and emotional, but also singular. Vocalist and band founder Michael Lee kicks off the song with the line “My teenage war still marks me undefeated in your room again.” And later he adds, “I’m falling to pieces, too scared to be the same.” That’s a rallying cry for teenage confusion, if ever there was one.

Hear “Teenage Tide” in concert with the rest of the tracks on the Paper Crush EP, Letting Up’s most recent release, which Old Flame Records released digitally on August 2, 2011.

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Nada Surf “Electrocution”

The High Dials “Teenage Love Made Me Insane”

September & October 2011 MP3 Rewind