The Goodbye Party — Beautiful Motors (Double Double Whammy)
Beautiful Motors by The Goodbye Party
Michael Cantor, who records as The Goodbye Party, wears his love for Big Star on his sleeve, especially in “December Boys,” whose name twists a Chilton classic and whose tuneful, jangling, elaborately harmonized chorus scratches a power pop itch. Cantor, from Philadelphia, has been making scratchy, reedy confessionals erupt into guitar mayhem for a while. He started in the punk-pop Ambulars, and later hooked up with Radiator Hospital’s Sam Cook-Parrott in the Afterglows. He’s now on his second solo album, a rough gem of a record, earnest and heartbroken but splintering into radiant rock ‘n roll euphoria.
Beautiful Motors’ quieter moments evoke a certain kind of sweet, wistful indie pop that used to be common but has lately fallen through the cracks. You’ll hear shades of Carissa’s Weird’s lovely vocal interplay, a bit of the Boston band Dimes’ unassuming acoustic tunefulness, a touch of the great, underrated Wiretree’s stinging, sugar-high hooks. That you don’t use these bands as comparisons, ever, is a sign of how obscure this type of music has become and how far the music industry has drifted away from indie pop.
The best moments come, though, when Cantor cuts loose, finding strength and swagger and distortion in the chorus. Like the songs, the album gains confidence as it goes. There’s a country rock uproar in later cuts like “Rust” and “Lost” that might remind you of the Moondoggies or even that first electrified Big Thief album, the one they slyly titled Masterpiece before anyone else started using the term. A bit of pedal steel twangs away in “No Reason,” pulling the music towards Americana, though never all the way.
The songs, like nearly all pop songs, are about love gone awry, love past, love remembered from a distance. In the single “Unlucky Stars,” a boinging, rubber band guitar riff, a hard racket of drums shore up a sensitive boy meditation on the wreck of attachment. “Tell me what I’ve been given/not the same as what I’ll keep,” sings Cantor, in his whistly high upper register, wringing every possible bit of power pop sweetness out of heartbreak one more time. It’s definitely not in fashion, this stuff, but also never entirely out of it.
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Happy Weekend
This is the second part of a two-part trailer post. The first part can be found here.
It has been a good week in terms of movie viewing as I mixed Hong Kong, French, and Japanese films. Since last weekend I have watched
On the Run, Angel Terminators 1 and 2, Hottamaru Days, Beau Travail, Il Postino, High Kick Girl, and Illumination.
This week I posted a review for the film Hole in…
Philadelphia duo The Afterglows have released a self-titled album of lo-fi indie rock that has nods to power-pop, punk and a kind of warped, mournful Americana. Available on a pay-what-you-want deal from Bandcamp, it is a fine listen that we’re thoroughly enjoying. Grab it here or listen to a couple of tracks below first, Spitting Blood and Punks From The Past.…
