Alan Haber's Pure Pop Radio is the archive for the premiere website that covered the melodic pop scene with in-depth reviews of new and reissued recordings, and a wide variety of features. We are now closed for new activity.
Missed it last week? No worries: Our exclusive Pure Pop Radio: In Conversation interview with Andy Klingensmith and his pal and drummer Riley Smith is now posted on our PodOMatic podcast page. Listen! Download! Do both! We all love ya either way!
Andy and Riley talk exclusively to us about Andy’s latest smash EP, Bright Again. This is another hall-of-fame release from one of pop’s brightest new lights. Don’t miss our sit down with Andy and Riley!
Enjoy!
It’s like a volcano erupting, like finding Brigadoon two days a year, like winning a stuffed animal in one of those drop-the-claw-and-win-a-prize machines you find in restaurants along the New Jersey Turnpike. It’s like, wow, a pretty darned exciting week ahead on Pure Pop Radio!
Coming up tonight at 9 pm ET, it’s the latest edition of the fabbest Beatles radio show this side of Liverpool: Ken Michaels’ Every Little Thing. This time around, Ken is spinning a classic tune from Mary Hopkin, interviewing famed recording engineer Dennis Ferrante, who worked with John Lennon, and going all acoustic for a special set. As usual, Every Little Thing is not to be missed!
This week, Pure Pop Radio: In Conversation is celebrating the release of the latest recordings from Jamie and Steve, aka Jamie Hoover and Steve Stoeckel. The duo’s new release is an EP called Circling, and it’s another home run–another reason to celebrate melodic pop music. Jamie and Steve gather around the In Conversation microphones to talk in-depth about four of the songs, and you get to hear them, masterpieces all. Tune in tomorrow night–Tuesday, March 18–at 8 pm ET for all of the fun. The show replays on Wednesday, March 19 at 8 pm ET.
And, speaking of In Conversation, our lively, funny, full-of- cool-information and rockin’ and poppin’ interview with Cool King Chris and, wearing his producer’s hat, Jamie Hoover, which aired last week, is now available for listening and/or downloading on our PodOMatic podcast page. Never before have we put the spotlight on musical magicians who apparently moonlight as standup comedians, but there’s always a first time. This one’s going into the In Conversation Hall of Fame, folks!
So don’t miss this week’s top-flight Pure Pop Radio events: Ken Michaels’ Every Little Thing, tonight at 9 pm ET; Jamie and Steve on Pure Pop Radio: In Conversation, tomorrow night and Wednesday night at 8 pm ET; and last week’s In Conversation interview with Cool King Chris and Jamie Hoover, now posted on our PodOMatic podcast page for listening and/or downloading.
Much more to come this week here on the Pure Pop Radio website. Stay tuned!
Andy Klingensmith
Bright Again
Futureman Records (2014)
If Pictures Of found Andy Klingensmith in fine, mid-period Simon and Garfunkel mettle, then the new EP Bright Again finds the young singer-songwriter wiping his sonic canvas clean and adding a few, new, sparkling layers on top of his folk-pop leanings.
Klingensmith’s overall approach, in fact, is decidedly different and fresh this time around, only five months after the release of his freshman offering. Whereas Pictures Of, as accomplished a work of musical art as was released last year, featured only bright and vibrant acoustic guitars underpinning the gorgeous vocal stacks of three-dimensional harmonies and astute, majestic lyrics, Bright Again adds bass, keyboards, drums (deftly performed by Riley Smith), percussion and woodwinds (played sensitively by Jay Gummert) to the mix, and paints a decidedly pop picture while still retaining the already-established folk-pop foundation.
Recording at home again, Klingensmith, whether on purpose or not, channels Curt Boettcher, the vocal sound of the Roches, and the Free Design and sets out to twist and turn preconceived notions about his approach, even as he posits that his basic notions haven’t really changed. The title song, for example, rolls along on the wings of gorgeous harmonies and a lovely woodwind melody line delivered pleasingly over an acoustic guitar strum. The artist begins singing about a communicative bond with a partner. Cheery chords, drums and percussion propel the upbeat tune along as the words paint a yin-yang picture that suggests all might not be well now but may be in the future. “Stop me if you have heard this one before,” the narrator suggests. “Man walks into the world, stays a while/What’s the use of a mind? What’s it good for?/When everything is erased with her smile.”
Lofty questions such as these kick off this sophomore release. The questions do not stop after “Bright Again” plays out. In the breezy, second song, “No Control,” Klingensmith plays with varied rhythm structures as he spins a tale that touches on duality (“Something in the words we choose makes the things we say come in twos/Which do you wish that I prefer?”) and one’s path in life (“There’s fate but that’s just a wait/A key with no gate/A line much too straight/And though the things that we know are not fading slow/There’s one place to go.” Once again, lovely, inventive harmony stacks both surprise and delight.
Feelings that manifest as delicate notions are at the heart of “Oh Miss No Name.” Suggesting that such realizations may be fleeting, Klingensmith sings “I’ll write a few words with water from the fountain/But, soon as it’s done, it dries.” Crestfallen or not, he addresses his thoughts in the final verse: “Oh miss no name, perpetual love/Feels just like we are hand in glove/I’m just musing, remove the “m”/Now just using my mind ’til then.”
And so it goes with lyrics that are wise and ring true for all manner of listener, whether Klingensmith is writing about the open air in “The Parade” (“And I would ask the sky to take a seat if it wasn’t still under my feet”), ruminating on the mysteries of life in “The Penultimate Color” (“And so how long will nature still pen its overture/Where will the notes fall in the dark without us knowing?”), or musing about anticipation in “Peels and Feels” (“I forget just what I was, waiting for/A thousand days, out the door”). And so it goes, as well, with every note rightly expended within the confines of these richly wrought songs, cleverly realized creations that stand with the best of them.
Released on January 14, 2014, Bright Again would signal the arrival of a major artist had the full-length Pictures Of not already done that in 2013. Another full album, recorded out of the safety of home, is next on Klingensmith’s plate. It cannot help but reveal additional, emotional layers befitting a musician whose vision sees more detail with each new composition, whose every new step takes him into the great unknown with an eye toward completing his next musical chapter. For the sky is the limit, and the limit is endless and just around the corner. Andy Klingensmith, once again and forevermore, has arrived.
– Alan Haber
Alan Haber's Pure Pop Radio 