(In
case you're wondering, clockwise from top: The Nerves, "Hanging On The
Telephone," "The Raspberries, "Side 3," The Flamin' Groovies, "Now,"
The Flashcubes, "Christie Girl.")
| The Tweezers - Already! |
| Pop
is universal. It's sometimes sweet, saccharine, dark, light, up, down,
take your pick, but there's something about a pop song that's immediate
enough to hit people in the same spot, wherever they may come from. Pop is hard. It's not much of a secret that making something simple work is often more difficult than making complexity work, and this goes double for pop. There's a reason pop singers usually rely on a stable of songwriters, and why songwriters with longevity are usually not described as "pop," even when the term fits (Elvis Costello, for example. His music is essentially pop, but when was the last time you saw it called that?) Pop is forgiving, despite this. You can break every other rule: you can be ugly, annoying, talent free, or, in the case of The Tweezers, utterly devoid of anything even remotely resembling originality, but if you have the tune...all is forgiven. Featuring a gent by the name of Fifi (from the freshly broken up Teengenerate,) and three other partners in crime, you can't really say The Tweezers do anything different from the four records pictured on their sole album, "Already's," cover. Normally, this would be cause for concern, but since we're talking pop here, that's not a handicap. In fact, if it's done well, it's a cause for celebration. "Ready" is, first and foremost, all about nostalgia. Even the band photo on the back has them in suits and skinny ties, a'la The Knack. Yes, the pop in question is power pop, and the rules are simple: three minute songs (four if you wanna get emotional, but not more than once or twice an album,) be about getting or losing love, have nothing challenging in the way of instrumentation (guitars are a given,) and for God sakes, be catchy as all get out. As mentioned, The Tweezers stick to the rules so closely you could accurately guess the album's contents by the cover, and the songs are catchy enough to completely wipe out any and all complaints of nostalgia. Writing about pop music is always difficult, since it's all about the elusive and indefinable "hook," a musical element that is all feel and no theory. It does bear mentioning that "Get That Girl" sounds like the title, "Walking With The Radio On" sounds like the title, "The Glory Girls..." You get the idea. The performances are not just energetic and peppy (another requirement,) but also uniformly spot on. The songwriting is fantastic, three chords, verse chorus verse with enough hooks to stun an ox. You could make seven singles out of this album's contents and be justified in each and every one. Necessarily, bands of this stripe tend to make one great album, and are either never heard from again, or release a middling second album that's nowhere near as brilliant (The Vapors, The Knack, etc.) The endorphin rush of a good power pop album (or even a single) is essentially unsustainable, and if the artist is to keep going, they usually need to pull in other elements, continually move the goalposts (which brings us back to Elvis Costello, actually.) The Tweezers stopped here, which is exactly what they should have done. They left in their wake one brilliant jewel of a skinny tie pop album, and the world can never have enough of those. |