my power pop addiction, no. 129 (201)

Dwight Twilley is my muse. There’s a documentary about him coming out soon and I can’t wait to see it. To the extent that he’s known at all outside his relatively small but feverishly devoted following, it’s for his first three albums, Sincerely, Twilley Don’t Mind, and Twilley. But his later records, including 47 Moons, should not be overlooked. Tonight’s song, the title track from 47 Moons, is somewhat atypical in that Twilley is a consummate master of pop, yet here he does the ultimate anti-pop thing and lets the song stretch out for almost seven minutes. There’s almost no pop song that needs to go on for that long. Under three minutes is ideal, and I might tolerate four minutes or so if the song really knocks me out. But when you start getting into five, six and seven-minute songs, then we’re no longer really talking about pop, at least not in the sense that I think of it. But I make an exception for 47 Moons. The song feels like Twilley’s attempt to do something akin to Strawberry Fields Forever, and the added length might be a function of the helplessness he expresses in the face of the passage of time, almost as if he’s trying with his music to slow life down. ‘Jupiter has 47 moons, we only have one.’ This is just my interpretation and I might be way off. But the song is pretty damn emotional either way. You have to be in the right mood to really appreciate it. Then again, I’m pretty much always in the right mood for Dwight Twilley, even when his songs go on for longer than they probably should…