Mixtape: Young Hearts Unite

There have been a lot of genres that have given support through the lockdown juggling act over here – Sunshine Psych (done that one), jangle pop (ditto) but I locked into a specific branch of latter day power pop and it all started to coalesce into a new mixtape. The formative years of power pop are captured endlessly on comps, often with the same tracklists shuffled and reshuffled, but there’s less documentation on these past ten years to be sure. Now, while that period of time might not be known as a heyday of power pop, you’d be wrong in that assessment. There’s a lot of high-profile, excellent stuff that crosses boundaries and digs out earworms (see: Ex Hex, The Bad Moves, Martha) all great but not what I was looking for in this regard. For this mix I focused on a strain of power pop that was derived directly from those late ’70s, early ’80s types that populated the comps circulating my youth. There’s a certain loose, edge of punk, but more lovesick and soft strain here. I find that sunny days and power pop go hand in hand, so this just seems like fortuitous timing. Hope it brightens someone’s day and sends you riffling back through the stacks of the last decade.

Tracklist:

1. The Barreracudas – Baby Baby Baby
2. Wyatt Blair – Young Hearts Unite
3. Young Guv – Ripe For Love
4. Mikah Wilson – Sweet Jules
5. The Whiffs – Dream About Judy
6. White Wires – Down On My Own
7. Michael Rault – I’ll Be There
8. The Happy Thoughts – Back of the Line
9. Apache – OMC
10. Bare Wires – Ready To Go
11. First Base – (I’m A) Stranger
12. COZY – Huggin’ Machine
13. Punks On Mars – Hey! Tiffany
14. Autogramm – I Wanna Be Whipped
15. Nude Beach – Some Kinda Love
16. Slick! – Know It Tonight
17. Gentleman Jesse – Frostbite
18. Mother’s Children – Talk To Her
19. Biters – Hang Around
20. Dot Dash – Sun + Moon = Disguise
21. The Wrong Words – Wrong Again
22. Velveteen Rabbit – Too Much, Just Enough