Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Jumping the whale

From Rolling Stone
The Jonas Brothers are acting their dad's age. The boys' fantastic third album is steeped in the fuzzed-up guitars, three-part harmonies and cotton-candy choruses of Big Star and Cheap Trick. Power-pop die-hards awaiting the genre's commercial saviors must reckon with the fact that the messiahs have arrived . . . and they're a Disney boy band.
I've been pre-programmed me to dismiss pre-fabricated Disney boy bands, but my eyes and ears perk up whenever I see references to power pop, Big Star, and Cheap Trick. EW also dropped a couple of CT-bombs on their review, so I've been running through Jonas clips on youtube today, trying to LWP. Of the JBs songs I've sampled so far, I think this one ("Pushing Me Away") has the crunchiest groove.



In this interview with Billboard, Nick Jonas claimed that the song "B.B. Good" was influenced by the Animals and the Rascals. Nick is 15 years old, so I don't know how he could be influenced by second-level 1960s bands, but it's kind of cool if he is. Nick might even understand the historical significance of his band's initials!

2 comments:

2fs said...

Without entering into evaluating the actual music here, I think it's perfectly reasonable that someone could be influenced by music made before they were born. Any music that has an influence on you does so because you listen to it and internalize its sounds, logic, and so forth - it's not as if music these days is confined to live performances. (And many radio formats seem to think the musical world ended around 1981 anyway...)

Unknown said...

I wanna cut the JBs some slack for being so young and, presumably, not working with a committee of 12 song doctors, but that track you posted didn't do too much for me.

However, now I am curious to hear the rest of the album! So thanks.