Modern Sunshine Part 2

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 20:26:41 -0700

I've fallen behind on my sunshine pop theme due to spending last night sorting out the dueling MySpace players problem. Solution: no more MySpace players. If they've got it set to autostart, there's not a thing you can do about it by tweaking parameters in the embed code.

In reviewing the tags on today's mp3 files, I realized that I've been conflating sunshine pop with "baroque pop." The archetype of the baroque pop song is Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair/Canticle," but another song on the same album (Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme), "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)," is certifiable sunshine pop, so the two subgenres are largely intertwined in style, but not mood.

Eric Matthews has been plying his baroque, and occasionally sunny, pop since 1995, when he released his first album, It's Heavy In Here, on Sub Pop, of all labels. In the present decade he has released two albums on Empyrean Records, the most recent being 2006's Foundation Sounds. The sunniest of its 17 songs is "All the Clowns"--

All the Clowns

Eric Matthews

Neil Hannon has flitted from style to style in his enduring career as The Divine Comedy, and he is no stranger to sunshine pop. While true sunshine pop tends toward naively earnest lyrics, I don't think earnesty* has ever been a component of Hannon's songwriting. (Not his best songwriting, at least; while impeccably arranged, Absent Friends sinks under the weight of its bloated Meaningfulness.) Wryness, slyness, archness, satire, ridicule, exaggeration, swagger, irresponsibility--these are the ingredients of his finest concoctions. "Perfect Love Song" may be all sunshine on the surface, but I can hear Neil smirking all the way through:

03-PERFECT LOVE song

The Divine Comedy

And now there is Steve Rinaldi, performing as Rinaldi Sings (thanks to Salty Miss Jill for hipping me to him!):

And that concludes my abbreviated roundup of sunshine, or vaguely sunshiney, popsters. No, wait, it doesn't--here's a repeat of Mike Flowers's blindingly brilliant (like the sun!) "A Groovy Place" (delivered with an even bigger smirk than Neil Hannon's, I imagine):

01 A Groovy Place

The Mike Flowers Pops

OK, now I'm done.

* The spellchecker tells me "earnesty" isn't really a word, but I think it should be, so it stays in.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

The Divine Comedy

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:09:48 -0800

Since Salty Miss Jill brought up Neil Hannon in the Music Lovers post, here is Neil himself singing his song with "Jill" in the lyrics:

04 If...

The Divine Comedy

Neil Hannon is the true inheritor of Scott Walker's mantle, though he has a lighter touch: his humor is more sardonic than morbid. (Walker himself now inhabits a different musical planet altogether.) The best Divine Comedy album so far is Casanova, from 1996, which spawned the delightfully wicked single, "The Frog Princess"--

The Divine Comedy - The Frog Princess

What a cheeky little man! Incidentally, I owe my Divine Comedy fandom to Duncan Sheik, who linked to the DC website from his. Co-incidentally, I heard Duncan's "She Runs Away" at the gas station yet again last week. That song must really make people spend!

Send to a friend

Burl Veneer’s Music Blog

Modern Sunshine Part 2

The Divine Comedy