Boy, today was a bad day for me. My work is really stressful right now and, what's worse, my feline guardian angel is sick again and has to go back to the animal hospital first thing in the morning. So my nerves are frayed. Not a lot of time today to think about power pop. It's too bad because the song I selected for tonight is one of my favorites. 20/20's second album, Lookout!, is not nearly as epic as the first, but I seem to like it a little more than most of the pop geeks I know. I think what happened was that the record company wanted another commercial powerhouse like the Cars or the Police, both of whom were quite a bit more commercially successful than bands like 20/20 and Shoes. Don't get me wrong. I love me my Cars (the Police not so much), but usually the attempt to replicate a winning sound for strictly commercial purposes turns the sound into formula and ends up creating a watered down and inferior version of the original. Not always, but definitely more often than not. And so it was with 20/20's middling 1981 follow up to their stellar debut. But like I said, it's got some nice moments, including Nuclear Boy, which might be the best thing they ever did. I really dig the way the song sounds so completely fueled by yellow pills but also somehow has a bit of a teenybopperish vibe to it. This is a very common tension in the New Wave incarnation of power pop, it seems. I'm thinking in particular of Rick Springfield, Phil Seymour, the Cars, the Records... The only other thing I would say about Nuclear Boy is that the slashing guitar solo is guaranteed to have you bouncing off the walls. If it doesn't, well then I really don't know what else to say except that you and I probably can't be friends...
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