New Old Pop
Some good ol’ guitar-oriented pop:
De Novo Dahl: Move Every Muscle, Make Every Sound (Roadrunner): I love the Polyphonic Spree-ness of “Shout” and lose interest pretty quickly afterwards. It’ll be on my iPod and tapes I make for my wife for her car, but it’s hard to imagine returning to anything else on it.
 Sloan: Parallel Play (Yep Roc): I can’t argue with anyone who find this a little pale next to Never Hear the End of It, or even those who find Sloan a little pale. They’re Canadian formalists; what do you expect? Still, Parallel Play crystalized something for me; I now hear them as being like the Raspberries, influenced by Beatles-era pop, then fascinated by the ways that music can be taken apart and reassembled. Ultimately, pop music itself is the subject of the Sloan’s albums; the fact that it also delivers pop pleasure is the byproduct of a fairly brainy exercise. I can listen to the sugary “Cheap Champagne” and “Witch’s Wand” over and over, and I like the belated embrace of the Modern Lovers on “Emergency 911″. The album’s a little short on great (or even really good) moments, but I’m amused by the way they take a line from Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and make ”Down in the Basement” a literal track about growing into domesticity playing rock ‘n’ roll.
The Ting Tings: We Started Nothing (Columbia): England seems to have an endless supply of just-figured-out-what-to-do-with-the-instruments dancy pop bands, and the Ting Tings are another one. Katie White has a winning brat on the street vibe that carries almost anything with half a hook. Still, listened to as an album, you get over it. I’ll return to “Great DJ,” “Shut Up and Let Me Go” and “Keep Your Head” and skip “Traffic Light.”
