my power pop addiction, no. 31 (103)

It's interesting to me that, in spite of being so heavily influenced by the Beatles and the British Invasion, there's not really much power pop that's come out of the UK. At least not stuff that I know of. It's largely an American phenomenon that later reverberated in Australia and New Zealand, but not so much in Britain. There are exceptions, like the Records, Dave Edmunds, Badfinger, and XTC, and there may be a lot more that I'm not aware of at this point. I realize now that I've only begun to scratch the surface with this stuff. So let me put it this way: The vast majority of the power pop that I like, so far, is American. As for today's song, I like but don't love XTC. They're a bit too quirky for my taste. There's an arty element to what they do that puts me off. I don't mind artiness - David Bowie is a hero of mine, as is Peter Hammill, and I love a lot of progressive rock and Krautrock - but I don't want my pop to be arty, unless you consider something like Good Vibrations or I am the Walrus to be arty. Again, there are exceptions to my aversion to art pop, if you will, like a lot of Todd Rundgren's music, where even the most accessible stuff has strange things going on. But how many Todd Rundgrens are there? This sets the bar impossibly high. He can do arty pop and make it enjoyable on multiple levels, but most artists doing pop can't and shouldn't. It's for this reason that I've never really been able to fully penetrate XTC. I've tried many times over the years, but they've yet to click for me. Still, I like Senses Working Overtime a lot, and I'm sure I'll go back to XTC every so often, just to see if maybe I can have a breakthrough and connect with what they're trying to do...