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Like metal, power pop listeners often seem less concerned with how unique, satisfying, or overall impressive a particular artist is, but rather with how well they fit into the specifications set out some thirty years ago by b-bands like Big Star, The Beatles, and Badfinger, to say nothing of Cheap Trick or nineties acts like Jellyfish or Velvet Crush. In other words, how powerfully poppy a band is determines their standing, and one sure-fire way most bands could improve is by shaving a few minutes off their tracks and start writing songs that sound like “September Gurls.”
Plumbing the depths of power pop history will uncover many gems, but trying to judge bands by their power-pop savvy is self-defeating, and labels like the mostly lame Not Lame records are a testament to style over substance. The best music in power pop has come from its originators, or followers who have dabbled in the form while also adding their own imprint (Teenage Fanclub, early Ride, The Posies).
Baltimore band Myracle Brah gave power pop a promising twist on albums dating to the late '90s, with frontman Andy Bopp clearly embracing the style but adding respectability to the canon as on the full-throttle track “I’m in Love” on Life on Planet Earthsnopp or the forceful “Isn’t it a Crime” from the Platespinner album, which begs for multiple listens. Unfortunately, the poorly-titled Can You Hear the Myracle Brah offers little other than the surface pleasures of big, bright chords and equally bright production. Bopp’s songs follow the formula charted out on past pop successes from rock’s past, but the hooks are all unsurprising, catchy as they may be.
Any chance of a surprise on Can You Hear the Myracle Brah is all but squelched on opener “No More Words,” a dated, disappointing throwback to the slight appeal of the early nineties acts like Matthew Sweet and others whose influence would be all but shuttered in the ensuing grunge typhoon. The goofy ode “Big Kids Wanna Rock” does little to improve the album’s overall flatness, and even the shimmery, echo-laden ballad “The Night Belongs To You” or the guitar pyrotechnics on the six minute-plus “Run the Voices” aren’t enough to make Can You Hear the Myracle Brah more than formulaic.
For power-pop fans, Myracle Brah’s newest will inevitably satisfy the checklist of what they expect from their rock: large songs that Marc Bolan might have written had he made it well past thirty. Those who don’t qualify their tunes based on the similarities to Cheap Trick’s In Color won’t be accessorizing their record collections with Myracle Brah anytime soon.
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