my power pop addiction, no. 108 (180)

There are worse things you could do than make a Spirit of ’66 Pet Sounds-Rubber Soul fusion album with bits of the Byrds and the Left Banke thrown in to give the music added sheen. I must confess, however, that there’s a not insignificant part of me that wants to reject Splitsville’s Pet Soul as just a little too clever for its own good, what with its nerdy-cool record collector pose. Perhaps I feel so much of my essence in the music that it makes me uncomfortable. But in the end, these guys are simply too damn talented and too good at what they do. Resistance is futile. They hit all their idols’ nuances in ways that are just right. The album is nothing less than a joyous celebration of the very peak of human civilization, replete with fulsome guitars and airy West Coast harmonies. I don’t even mind that there’s a song on the record called Caroline Knows. It helps that it’s a fantastic song that does honor to its progenitor. When the music is good, all other considerations go out the window for me. The whole thing is a bit show offy and over the top, no doubt, but I’ll bet you a Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda you’ll be seduced by Pet Soul’s mimetic charms after one listen straight through. It won’t feel like the first time, and maybe not even the third or 25th or 100th, but demanding that it do so at this overripe point in the age of simulation would be setting the bar impossibly high. Let’s simply be grateful that there remain folks for whom this type of thing still matters. Every last one of them forestalls the fade into oblivion, the fate of the dinosaurs. If loving this shit is wrong, I don’t wanna be right…