Jonathan Mudd
(Major Label Interest)
The North Carolina powerpop tradition is a long and, by some estimations, noble tradition; or maybe your memory doesn't stretch back to the early/mid ‘80s when the likes of Let's Active, The dB's and The Connells proudly waved the Tarheel banner and spawned scores of like-minded outfits. Carolina ex-pat Jonathan Mudd most certainly took notice of how pop is imbued with a particular timelessness, and although he now calls D.C. his home, on the evidence of these 11 songs, his heart's permanently in Comboland.
Truth Lies, Mudd's second solo album (it follows 2005's Any Good Heaven), has all the requisite powerpop hallmarks: meaty guitar riffs atop propulsive rhythms; instantly hummable melodies and a keen sense of dynamic; lyrics about loving and losing and getting back together, all with an undercurrent of reflection and redemption. Yet classic pop tunes don't lend themselves easily to sausage-factory analysis; too much dissection, in fact, and you lose sight of the old Lovin' Spoonful maxim about how the music can free ya whenever it starts. On Truth Lies you can start the music pretty much anywhere on the album and land on a gem.
"Round the Bend," for example, a love song in which the two protagonists discover how, indeed, they believe in magic, is a percolating rocker awash in sinewy riffs and "ooh-la-la-la" harmony vocals, while another unabashed riffer, "Breaking My Way," celebrates the blossoming of a relationship in cinema-worthy terms. The moody "Out of My Control," with its lyric and melodic hat-tips to Roxy Music's "Flesh and Blood," has a slow-burn intensity and a lingering grandeur. "Somewhere In the Night," part acoustic-tilting ballad, part cresting anthem, deserves to be heard by anyone who's committed the first two Big Star albums to memory. And album standout "On Fire," with its Springsteen-like imagery ("Baby, everything is gonna be all right/ Down every dark street we're gonna shine a light/ We'll burn it up tonight") and tension-building sonics (listen for the subtle "Don't Fear the Reaper" guitar nod), positively smolders - truth in titling - with passion.
Bottom line: Truth Lies both holds its own against the classic powerpop archetypes while delightfully advancing the game for the contemporary scene. It'll make you a believer all over again in the magic, and it just might free you, too.
Standout Tracks: "On Fire," "If You Ever Leave Me," "Somewhere In the Night" FRED MILLS
