If we’re working with the assumption that perfect pop songs come in round the three-minute mark, then how about an LP featuring 10 songs clocking in at exactly 30 minutes in length?
OK, it’s actually 29 minutes 59 seconds according to my trusty CD player, but we don't need to split hairs on that one, ‘cos where writing perfect 3-minute power pop gems goes, Lincoln quintet THE POPDOGS know a thing or ten. It’s taken ‘em a while to get together in this current guise (singer/ songwriter James Styring formerly fronted Postcards From Places That Don’t Exist), but it’s a new writing partnership with guitarist Tim McKeating that proved the catalyst for The Popdogs and their debut LP ‘Cool Cats For Pop Dogs’: one of those apparently nonchalant little power pop gems that’s always welcome regardless of how cynical this dreary ol’ industry has become.
Opener ‘Kelly’s On’ gives you a good idea what to expect. Brash, tuneful, fulla choruses, drop-dead West Coast-style harmonies and even a lethal, quicksilver guitar solo muscling in at the 90 second mark, it’s one of those ‘heard once, forever imprinted’ moments and it’s not alone. Within the next five minutes or so, the chugging, straight up ‘Honest Guy’ and ‘High Time”s superior spangle’ n’ jangle have followed through, trailing hints of Cheap Trick and Big Star in their wake.
From thereon in, the pace rarely lets up. The yearning, semi-acoustic ‘Ocean Blue’ provides an ideal vehicle for Styring’s plaintive, Buddy Holly-esque voice and the rumbling, Duane Eddy/Dick Dale-ish surf instrumental ‘Mild Mannered J’ briefly brings things down a gear, but otherwise it’s one killer hook after another, from the Ramones-esque rush of ‘Kissin’ Alicia’ through to the vividly-realised, too-much-too-soon storyboard ‘Queen Of The USA’ (“Hotel room out in Vegas, they’d called the cops/ They found her in the bathtub, her heart had stopped”) which appears to have been scripted about a wannabe Drew Barrymore/ Courtney Love.
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Perhaps best of all, though, is the closing ‘Dancin’ Again’: a slice of enduring loveliness about meeting that special someone for the first time (“though I can’t deny these years are flyin’ by/ I’ll remember all those days until I die”) that can’t fail to tug at the hardest of hearts.
Ultimately, it’s hard to detect what’s not to love about the breezy’ n’ vivacious ‘Cool Cats For Pop Dogs’. Indeed, it seems that the attraction’s not just for Christmas, but for life. With that in mind, surely taking it out for walkies at least three times a day will surely prove beneficial for the discerning guitar pop fan’s soul.
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