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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After many repeated listens, it all boils down to this: the problem with Devon Williams‘ “Your Sympathy” is that when ends after three and a half minutes, you’re just going to want to listen to it again. However, further spins only amplify the issue, making you more inclined to want to hear it once more. It’s a powerful feedback loop–this song is a mesmerizing enchantress.

“Your Sympathy” was first released as the A-side of a single back in late June but finds its proper home as the second track on Williams’ new sophomore LP, Euphoria. Although his sound is an excellent fit for the Slumberland label (home to previously featured acts including Veronica Falls, Girls Names, Spectrals, Gold-Bears, and others), Williams doesn’t especially sound like any of his peers in particular. Instead, his music favors the jangle of formative 1980s indie-pop acts like Felt, Let’s Active, and even Aztec Camera, with their broad, warm melodies.

When Williams anchors the line “Ooh, I can’t get your sympathy” as the track’s focal point, he does so expertly, allowing a world of ever-increasing musical layers to swirl around that chorus’ gravitational pull. What begins as an accompaniment characterized by a single, stellar electric guitar riff soon gives way to the song’s final twinkling cosmos, dappled with lilting strings and new ideas from multi-tracked guitars, their notes bursting into life like so many little stars.

This is part of the reason “Your Sympathy” stands so tall during each subsequent listen: there is always a new shimmer to be seen dancing across its surface. Of course, all of that texture would be for naught if it weren’t for Williams’ sublime sense of melody, which is (as it should be) its main source of Euphoria.

Click here to listen to Euphoria on Spotify.

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Tim Williams “I Hit Another Wall”

Friday Mile “Lives of Strangers”

Jens Lekman “The End of the World is Bigger Than Love”

Alexandra Patsavas. The name may not be familiar to you but if you’ve followed music at all for the last decade, her tastes have likely had some bearing on what ends up on your iPod. Patsavas is the music supervisor behind such network tv shows as The O.C. and Grey’s Anatomy, and in that role she has probably been more responsible for bringing relatively obscure artists to mass audiences than any other person operating during the same time period. While many will likely roll their eyes at the thought of musical montages featuring ridiculously attractive doctors having emotional crises, there’s no denying that Patsavas shined a deserved spotlight on more than a few very worthwhile artists (in addition to countless legions of bland secretary rockers, the inevitable downside of her efforts.)

One such deserving artist to get a boost from featured placement on Grey’s Anatomy is Oxford, Mississippi’s Sanders Bohlke, whose tune “The Weight of Us” turned up on the show a few years back. An ethereal folk tune with echoes of Damien Rice and Nick Drake, “The Weight of Us” subsequently spread from Grey’s Anatomy to other shows in need of Bohlke’s somber gravitas to add the emotional heft the shows themselves were seemingly incapable of generating on their own, such as Smallville and The Vampire Diaries.

Any attention directed Bohlke’s way is a good thing, because as demonstrated by “Quiet Ye Voices,” he’s definitely worth the focus. Bohlke tips his hand with the title, showing that he’s more interested in the timeless and the slightly archaic than he is in being particularly contemporary. One gets the feeling that he wouldn’t be too upset if audiences were to assume that the song was an old ballad passed down for generations in remote Appalachian villages. However, he’s picked the perfect time to be timeless, as the swooping vocal harmonies he constructs to cushion his own voice put “Quiet Ye Voices” squarely in the same camp as the similarly out-of-time Fleet Foxes, and Bohlke proves himself to be just as fleet of foot as that combo.

So a round of thanks ought to be extended to Alexandra Patsavas. As the traditional outlets for musicians to get their work heard by the public began to wither over the last decade, she stepped up and opened a new door via prime time weepies. While a lot of the artists that burst through that door could have remained mired in obscurity with no detriment to the world at large, the occasional emergence of artists with the level of Sanders Bohlke ultimately makes Patsavas’ work worthwhile.

The Quiet Ye Voices 7″ was released in mid-August as a part of Communicating Vessels‘ limited edition vinyl singles series (which also includes an installment from previously featured act The Great Book of John).

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The Black Hollies “Gloomy Monday Morning”

“Morning Thought” actually sounds like its title. The first few notes which reach out over fuzzed out chords could be used to sell Taster’s Choice or Folger’s, no problem. Moments later, this tuneful track from Michigan-based duo Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. goes from foggy-brained to fully awake thanks to a gentle, glockenspiel-inspired breakdown fueled by joint vocals courtesy of Josh Epstein and Daniel Zott, the band’s founding (and only permanent) members.

As “Morning Thought” moves toward its close, it climbs notch by notch to a quiet pinnacle as Epstein and Zott’s entwined vocals ratchet up an architecture created almost wholly of synths. The occasional guitar chord keeps the whole thing from just floating away, like a kid with one too many helium balloons. That’s the secret of “Morning Thought”: instead of becoming so gauzy that the end result is just an insubstantial puff of notes, the song actually sticks thanks to those guitar riffs.

“Morning Thought” isn’t just a great way to begin the day–it’s also the solid leadoff track from It’s A Corporate World, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.’s full-length debut, which Warner Brothers and Michigan-based Quite Scientific released in June.

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The Black Hollies “Gloomy Monday Morning”

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