Tag: power pop

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Weird Nightmare Returns with Rousingly Anthemic and Earnest “Where I Belong”

Almost every band that’s worth a damn has had a member, who at some point worked in a record store. With JOVM mainstay acts METZ and Weird Nightmare, it was frontman and creative mastermind Alex Edkins. Slinging indie rock and hardcore records at his hometown record store while attending university, Edkins became an ardent student of rock ‘n’ roll from the psychedelic 1960s to the DIY 1990s and beyond. 

Hoopla, Edkins’ sophomore Weird Nightmare album, which is slated for a May 1, 2026 release through Sub Pop globally and Dine Alone Records in Canada, reportedly sees the JOVM mainstay mixing and matching these wide-ranging influences in fun, exhilarating combinations, showcasing his sophisticated musical mind, while continuing to showcase his unerring knack for ridiculously catchy and rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses.

Co-produced by Edkins and Spoon‘s Jim Eno at Providence‘s world famous Machines With Magnets, Hoopla also sees the acclaimed Canadian artist expanding upon Weird Nightmare’s musical palette with the addition of piano, bells and castanets, which give his long-held straightforward songwriting a shiny luster. 

The album will feature the previously released “Forever Elsewhere,” the Cheap Trick-like “Might See You There,” the punchy punk rock-like “Pay No Mind,” and the album’s third single “Where I Belong.” “Where I Belong” continues to showcase Edkins’ long-held penchant for rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses paired with some of the most introspective and deeply honest songwriting of the JOVM mainstay’s career. The song captures a narrator who’s recognizing that he’s getting older, that the road ain’t what it always is cracked up to be — especially since he has a family. The self-doubt and confusion at the core of the song are real and deeply lived in yet they feel universal and familiar to anyone, who’s inching into middle age.

Directed by boy wonder, the accompanying video for “Where I Belong” features Edkins in a thrift shop, playing his guitar and singing while trying on different outfits and personalties.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 82nd Birthday, RIc Ocasek!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 82nd anniversary of the birth of Ric Ocasek.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Weird Nightmare Shares Punchy “Pay No Mind”

Almost every band that’s worth a damn has had a member, who at some point worked in a record store. With JOVM mainstay acts METZ and Weird Nightmare, it was frontman and creative mastermind Alex Edkins. Slinging indie rock and hardcore records at his hometown record store while attending university, Edkins became an ardent student of rock ‘n’ roll from the psychedelic 1960s to the DIY 1990s and beyond. 

Hoopla, Edkins’ sophomore Weird Nightmare album, which is slated for a May 1, 2026 release through Sub Pop globally and Dine Alone Records in Canada, reportedly sees the JOVM mainstay mixing and matching these wide-ranging influences in fun, exhilarating combinations, showcasing his sophisticated musical mind, while continuing to showcase his unerring knack for ridiculously catchy and rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses.

Co-produced by Edkins and Spoon‘s Jim Eno at Providence‘s world famous Machines With Magnets, Hoopla also sees the acclaimed Canadian artist expanding upon Weird Nightmare’s musical palette with the addition of piano, bells and castanets, which give his long-held straightforward songwriting a shiny luster. 

The album will feature the previously released “Forever Elsewhere,” and the Cheap Trick-like “Might See You There.”

Hoopla‘s third and latest single “Pay No Mind” is a punchy, downright punk rock-like take on power pop, anchored around Edkins’ unerring knack for ridiculously catchy hooks and big riffs paired with what may arguably be his most socially aware, thoughtful lyrics of his growing catalog.

“We had a blast making this video with director Ryan Faist,” the Weird Nightmare creative mastermind says,. “It was a nod to the Elvis Costello and the Attractions ‘Pump it Up‘ video and some early footage of the Buzzcocks on cable access TV. 
 
“The lyric was lifted from an Atlantic City tourism t-shirt. ‘I’m so broke, I can’t even pay attention‘ struck me as a particularly accurate comment on modern life. Obviously, the shirt is meant to be funny, but it felt quite dark to me. Due to the overwhelming onslaught of information and emotional baggage that comes with it, I think there is a tendency for people’s lives to become quite myopic. As a coping mechanism, we become more and more insular, ignoring the world around us.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Weird Nightmare Shares Sweetly Nostalgic and Anthemic “Might See You There”

Almost every band that’s worth a damn has had a member, who at some point worked in a record store. With JOVM mainstay acts METZ and Weird Nightmare, it was frontman and creative mastermind Alex Edkins. Slinging indie rock and hardcore records at his hometown record store while attending university, Edkins became an ardent student of rock ‘n’ roll from the psychedelic 1960s to the DIY 1990s and beyond.

Hoopla, Edkins’ sophomore Weird Nightmare album, which is slated for a May 1, 2026 release through Sub Pop globally and Dine Alone Records in Canada, reportedly sees the JOVM mainstay mixing and matching these wide-ranging influences in fun, exhilarating combinations, showcasing his sophisticated musical mind, while continuing to showcase his unerring knack for ridiculously catchy and rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses.

Co-produced by Edkins and Spoon‘s Jim Eno at Providence‘s world famous Machines With Magnets, Hoopla also sees the acclaimed Canadian artist expanding upon Weird Nightmare’s musical palette with the addition piano, bells and castanets, which give his long-held straightforward songwriting a shiny luster.

The album will feature the previously released “Forever Elsewhere,” and the album’s latest single “Might See You There.” Seemingly channeling Cheap Trick and Weezer, “Might See You There” is a raise-your-beer in air and shout along with your best pals power pop anthem that continues to showcase Edkins’ remarkable craftsmanship. But the song is anchored in sweet, perhaps rose-colored glasses of nostalgia for one’s youth. In the case of “Might See You There,” the boredom, isolation and small joys of the narrator’s teenaged years, living in a small town — before the days of social media and constant screen time.

“‘Might See You There’ is about going back to visit my hometown and being flooded with teenage nostalgia,” Edkins explains. “Small-town boredom and isolation almost feel like a gift in today’s highly connected world. I feel fortunate for that time spent idly, down in the basement, learning the entire Rancid Let’s Go album on guitar with my friends. I find it easy to romanticise that time in my life, even though I was, without question, a disgruntled kid who badly wanted to escape my surroundings and see the world.
 
“I was listening to a lot of the Irish bands The Undertones and Protex while writing this one, and I think there is a fair bit of their influence,” the JOVM mainstay adds. “Just the simplicity and big bar chords mostly. Seth Manchester and I were very into the idea of adding piano and bells to the outro, akin to the Phil Spector-produced End of the Century album by The Ramones. The great Julianna Riolino sings with me on the choruses, too!”

The mind-bending, animated accompanying video was directed and edited by CC Mulligan.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Weird Nightmare Shares Defiantly Upbeat Anthem “Forever Elsewhere”

Known for his decade-plus stint as frontman of Toronto-based JOVM mainstays METZ, singer/songwriter and guitarist Alex Edkins developed and honed a reputation for being a master craftsman of eardrum splitting, hooky rippers.

Edkins’ recording project Weird Nightmare saw the longtime METZ frontman showcasing a sugary and distorted pop sensibility to his long-established reputation for enormous power chord riffs and rousingly anthemic hooks with the project’s 2022 self-titled, full-length debut and a handful of one-off singles.

His latest single, the Jim Eno co-produced “Forever Elsewhere” is a rollicking and defiantly upbeat, hook-driven anthem that sounds to me a bit like a synthesis of Edkins’ work with METZ and The Replacements. While retaining the anthemic hooks of his Weird Nightmare debut album, “Forever Elsewhere” is a decided departure from the lo-fi bedroom approach, and step forward into the high-fiddly, shout-along with your friends anthems. And lord knows, we need a few more of those right now.

“‘Forever Elsewhere’ is the most optimistic song I’ve written to date. I wanted to send an unequivocal positive message into the world,” Edkins explains. “The line ‘Love, it will come,’ summarizes the overall theme: if things feel hopeless and the world is bleak, don’t give up, keep pushing. I like to think of it as a pep talk wrapped in fuzzy guitars. 
 
“I recorded with Seth Manchester (he engineered the last two METZ records) and Jim Eno (Spoon), and we tracked this one really quickly. Drummer Loel Campbell (Wintersleep) and Roddy Kuester (Julianna Riolino/Sadies) nailed it in 2 takes, and you can really hear the ramshackle energy in the song where the wheels almost fall off a couple of times. We tried to keep it loose.”

Directed by Colin Medley, the accompanying video for “Forever Elsewhere,” is an adorable and fairly accurate portrayal of adolescence turning into young adulthood, with the bitter recognition that occasionally adulthood is some asshole trying to take advantage of you. And yet, love and kindness somehow sets things straight.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 81st Birthday, Ric Ocasek!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 81st anniversary of Ric Ocasek’s birth.

singer/songwriters by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 70th Birthday, Elvis Costello!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Elvis Costello’s 70th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 80th Birthday, Ric Ocasek!

William Ruben Helms celebrates the 80th anniversary of The Cars’ Ric Ocasek’s brith.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Weird Nightmare Returns with the Feel Good Power Pop Anthem “Lusitania”

Alex Edkins has developed and honed a reputation for being a master craftsman of sweaty, mosh pit friendly rippers as the frontman of Toronto-based JOVM mainstays METZ.  Interestingly, Edkins’ new side project Weird Nightmare sees the METZ frontman showcasing […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: METZ’s Alex Edkins’ New Project Weird Nightmare Shares Surreal Animated Visual for Debut Single

Alex Edkins has developed an honed a reputation for being a master craftsman of sweaty, mosh pit friendly rippers as the frontman of Toronto-based JOVM mainstays METZ.

Edkins’ new side project Weird Nightmare sees the METZ frontman showcasing a new side of his long-established songwriting featuring enormous power chords and mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses he’s best known for — but with a sugary, distorted power pop touch.

Weird Nightmare’s debut single “Searching For You” is a fun, straightforward power pop banger featuring shout-along-with-upraised-beer-in-the-mosh-pit choruses, swooningly earnest lyricism, the enormous power chords Edkins is best known for but with an accessible, old-timey inspired craftsmanship that makes the song incredibly radio friendly — as though it Edkins and his METZ bandmates were covering Cheap Trick or Big Star.

“It’s a fun, no nonsense rock ‘n’ roll song,” Edkins explains. “It’s about searching for meaning and inspiration all around us. In my mind, the ‘you’ in the chorus refers to something bigger than companionship or love, it’s that intangible thing we all look for but never find.”  

Directed by Ryan Thompson and animated by Jordan “Dr. Cool” Minkoff, the accompanying visual for “Searching For You” is fittingly a trip into a weird nightmare that follows a pizza delivery person racing against the clock to deliver a pizza before it becomes free.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Colleen Green’s Anthemic “It’s Nice to Be Nice”

Colleen Green is a Dunstable, MA-born, Los Angeles-based lo-fi rock/indie pop singer/songwriter and guitarist. Green’s career started in earnest with her full-length debut, 2011’s Milo Goes to Compton, an effort initially released as a cassette and later on vinyl through Art Fag Recordings.

The Dunstable-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and guitarist’s debut caught the attention of Seattle-based indie label Hardly Art Records, who signed her and released her sophomore album, 2013’s Sock It To Me. Green’s third album, 20115’s I Want to Grow Up was released to critical acclaim with LA Weekly readers voting her that year’s Best Solo Artist. The album was also her most commercially successful album to date, perhaps as a result of album single “Wild One” being featured on the Netflix series Love.

Thematically, I Want To Grow Up found Green at a familiar yet profound existential crisis: Although almost always cool, she didn’t necessarily feel so at that point: Seemingly too young to be free of insecurities, she was old enough to be sick of them running — and ruining — her life.

Green’s forthcoming third album Cool is her first album in six years. Slated for a September 10, 2021 release through Hardly Art, the album’s material reportedly finds her figuring out what it means to be grown up — and realizing that being an adult, who has somehow managed to live and survive through a full and messy life is pretty damn cool. Co-produced by Gordon Raphael and Green and featuring beats by hip-hop producer Aqua and drumming from Brendan Eder, the album was recorded in several different Southern California-based studios including Glendale’s comp-ny, North Hollywood’s Tenement Yard and Los Angeles’ Cosmic Vinyl. Sonically, the album sees Green retaining the lo-fi aesthetic that has won her praise and fans globally while pushing her songs to a higher level: burnt out on bad feelings, Green wanted to have fun with melodies and beats while keeping her lo-fi aesthetic intact.

The album features “I Want to Be a Dog,” a single released to praise from the likes of The New York Times, The Fader, Stereogum, Under the Radar, DIY, BrooklynVegan, Spin, Our Culture, Closed Captioned and others. Cool’s and latest single “It’s Nice to Be Nice” is a breezy bit of power pop centered around chugging power chords, an athemic chorus and razor sharp hooks. But underneath the big choruses and power chords, the song thematically is a reminder — both to the songwriter and the listener — that in life, you often get what you give, so it’s important to be the best person you can be. And in a world that regularly seems on the verge of collapse, the song’s message seems rather pertinent.

y Renee Lusano, the recently released video was shot on a boat, just off the Los Angeles coast. We see Green making herself a simple dinner of spaghetti and meatballs and hanging out on the boat. But we see someone, who has finally gained comfort in her own skin and mind. As Green calls it, “a nice video for a nice song.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Formed back in 2005, the New York-based rock/punk act Baby Shakes — Mary  (lead vocals), Judy (guitar, vocals), Claudia (bass, vocals) and Ryan (drums) have released a handful of one-off singles, a singles compilation, a 10 inch heart-shaped EP and three full-length albums that have firmly established their sound — melodic vocals paired with fuzzy power cords that generally draws from the likes of Ramones, Chuck Berry, 60s Motown-era girl groups.

The members of the band have toured across the US, Japan, China, Ireland, the UK and the European Union and shared stages with the likes of The Romantics, The Boys, The Shadows of Knight, The Undertones, The Barracudas, Protex, Black Lips, Paul Collin’s Beat, Iggy Pop and a growing list of others. Interestingly, the New York-based punk act’s forthcoming album Cause a Scene is slated for a September 20, 2019 release, and the album is reportedly indebted to the original wave of punk — in particular, The Nerves, The Kids, early Bangles and The Go-Gos, The Runaways, as well as the Ramones.

Clocking in at exactly two minutes, “Nowhere Fast,” Cause a Scene‘s lead single is a breakneck bit of fuzzy, old-school punk with an infectious, power pop-like hook — and while clearly indebted to Ramones, Go-Gos and the like, the song is one part snotty and in your face, one part sweet, and one part cynical scowl, delivered with the self-assuredness of old pros.

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Don Vail’s Lo-Fi Classic MTV-Inspired Visual for Anthemic “On The Wire”

Mitch Bowden is the founder of Mechanical Noise Studio, a recording studio that reportedly sits at the en dog a quiet, winding country road in Dunnville, Ontario, Canada; the sort of road frequently hared with foxes, windmills and little else. He’s also the founding member and creative mastermind behind indie rock act Don Vail — and over the past decade, all of those different identities have blurred into something synonymous for him. 

Bowden emerged into the Canadian indie rock scene with the release of his 2009 Jordon Zadorozny-produced, self-titled debut, an effort that deftly paired harmonic warmth and dispassionate math rock riffs. And instead of serving as a launching pad for Bowden’s career and rising profile, he spent the better part of close to a decade, releasing eight songs and playing two shows.  2016’s self-recorded, self-performed effort Fades managed to be a carefully crafted effort that on a certain level revealed the effect that isolation can have on an artist — way too much personal control, mastery of their craft countered by crippling perfectionism and a lack of urgency. 

Interestingly, during the spring of 2017, Bowden (and in turn, Don Vail) received a rather fortuitous invitation as a result of the previous year’s Fades — an invitation to record material at Grouse Lodge Studios in Ireland. Of course, there was a major catch: the window to show up and record wasn’t open indefinitely; in fact, Bowden only had a matter of a few weeks to turn sketches and pieces of ideas into fully fleshed songs. And at the time, Bowden realized that the band needed to be more than just him. So he enlisted the assistance of longtime drummer Victor Malang, guitarist Matthew Fleming and keyboardist/vocalist Kori Pop for the recording sessions for the act’s forthcoming third full-length album That Stand of Tide. 

The newly-constituted quartet wrote and rehearsed material together — and they all treated the experience at Grouse Lodge as an opportunity not to be wasted. And although the album was finished back at Mechanical Noise Studios in a similar fashion to his previously released material, the trip to Ireland pushed Bowden to get his shit together and finish the album. Reportedly, the album’s 13 songs at points recall Guided by Voices, Jon Biron and Figure 8-era Elliott Smith. While that may be arguable, the album’s latest single “On The Wire is an anthemic bit of fuzzy power pop centered around big and seemingly effortless hooks, and a palpable anxiety and uncertainty; but at its core is an intentionally heartfelt earnestness. 

Directed by Mitch Barnes and the band’s Victor Malang, the recently released video for “On The Wire” follows a painfully awkward and incredibly sad sack man, desperately trying to figure himself out and forge his own identity. And as he does so, he fails miserably — at everything. If there’s one thing that he’s good at, it’s his own nerdy awkwardness. Interestingly, the visuals are purposefully lo-fi, and bring to mind classic MTV with a mischievous aplomb.