Supercrush

While it seems hard to start outrunning the year end lists already, there’s still plenty of year left to consider, so I’m gonna keep running through the ones that have gotten away from me up until now. I’m ever the sucker for a good power pop album and Supercrush deliver an LP steeped in the lessons of the ’90s sweater set as they tumbled into the early aughts. The record is soaked in the kind of heartsick pop that could rattle around your brain for the better part of a summer, yet still find the volume knob creeping up when it came on. The band’s gotta have some well-worn copies of Velvet Crush, Matthew Sweet, Sloan, and Teenage Fanclub, but there’s a second-tier thrum from the era that comes through in a very good way. I mean that lovingly, as someone who would sift through old promos at jobs and radio stations of my past, finding mixtape fodder among the punch-holed copies of The Long Winters, By Divine Right, post-debut SuperDrag, and Ben Kweller. Sometimes it only takes that one song to hook yer heart, I guess.

Thankfully Supercrush has far more than just one that sinks the barbs into the flesh.The band avoids a lot of pitfalls of inconsistency that might have plagued their forerunners, and they pack the hooks tight against the fuzz on SODOpop. Songs trickle in on velvet pleas of understanding but just as often let the wall of amps fry away the melancholy buzz on a magenta plume of electric oblivion. They get out before their welcome could ever even be considered overstayed. At 36 minutes, this one leaves the listener wanting to the point of checking the player to see if it is indeed done. Sometimes that’s the best way, though — a whirlwind crush that’s a blur of color and heat that’s over before it ever began. Though this record feels like I’ve been there before, I’m not mad at the nostalgia rush one bit.

Support the artist. Buy it HERE.