Mike and Miles.

Mike Viola-Electro de Perfecto. Mike Viola needs little introduction for readers of this site. From his power pop band Candy Butchers to his work with Bleu (in LEO & The Major Labels) to a budding solo career, the one constant has been great pop songs. On his latest solo effort, Viola steps back a bit to create his most assured, mature recording to date while continuing to deliver the tunes. You might not realize this from the opener, the frenetic "Columbus Day Parade", but "Get You Back" (with Semisonic's Dan Wilson on harmony and FoW's Adam Schelsinger on bass) is magical midtempo pop, and "Soundtrack of My Summer" will be the soundtrack of your autumn with its clever, easygoing melody. Elsewhere, "Inside Out" is catchy as hell, and the closer "When the Stars Against You" is a wonderfully moody take on dealing with life's adversities. You probably don't need me to tell you to buy a Mike Viola album, but if you had the slightest hesitation my advice is to just do it.

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Miles Zuniga-These Ghosts Have Bones. It's hard to believe that this is Miles Zuniga's first proper solo album (although he did release a record in 2006 with his side project The Small Stars), but at long last the guy responsible for my most of my favorite Fastball tracks ("Fire Escape", "Airstream", "Mono to Stereo") gets the stage to himself. And These Ghosts Have Bones is worth the wait as Zuniga's pure popcraft is on full display. The Lennonesque opener "Marfa Moonlight" is wonderful, one of 2011's most unforgettable tracks and its lyrics are the source of the album title. "Rock Paper Scissors" is an excellent rocker that would have easily fit in on a Fastball record, while "Feel it in Your Kiss" displays a faint 70s R&B influence. Elsewhere, "Working on a Love Song" is a catchy number filled with irony (the writer of the song finishes it just in time to find its subject left him), and "Junkie Hands" finds Zuniga in a late-period Beatles state of mind. A great solo debut from one of my favorite pop songwriters, and a strong candidate for 2011's top 10.

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Major label Friday.

Actually, "major label" is a bit of misnomer (these releases haven't been featured in your latest Best Buy ad), but these are well-known acts with big-time distribution, so we'll use that particular shorthand here. I've been meaning to weigh in on these three for a while, so better late than never:

Fastball-Little White Lies. Fastball needs no introduction to those who read this blog, so the operative question here is how does it stack up to the rest of their catalog? And the answer is "quite well". In fact, song for song this might be their best ever, even if there isn't a "The Way" or "Fire Escape" on here. Frontmen Tony Scalzo and Miles Zuniga team up for the effervescent "All I Was Looking for Was You, while Scalzo pens a sequel of sorts to "The Way" with "The Malcontent (The Modern World)" wondering if the former is "still saying anything to you" while lamenting the disposable pop that pushed "The Way" and its like off the radio at the turn of the century. Zuniga is the purer popper of the two and his highlight here is hyper-catchy "Mono to Stereo", which is right up there with classics of his like "Fire Escape" and "Airstream". A welcome return from these veteran Texas power poppers.

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Tinted Windows-Tinted Windows. Also getting a lot of publicity lately is power pop supergroup Tinted Windows, consisting of Taylor Hanson (from Hanson), Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne), James Iha (Smashing Pumpkins) and Bun E. Carlos (Cheap Trick). It doesn't get much better than that on paper, but on disc the whole is a bit less than the sum of its parts. Don't get me wrong - this is a fun, catchy power pop album. But it's fairly generic for the genre, although I can see this being the power pop album for people that aren't that big into power pop, given the names involved. "Kind of a Girl" is pretty catchy, with its "whoa-whoas" in the chorus, the Cheap Trick-esque power ballad "Back With You" and the driving "Without Live" are the highlights here.

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Superdrag-Industry Giants. When John Davis put an apparent end to Superdrag after becoming a born-again Christian in the wake of 2002's brilliant Last Call for Vitriol, it appeared that we'd never heard from them as a band again. But seven years later, Davis reformed the band and it seems as the goal here is to make up for the absence by rocking harder and louder than ever, no small feat for a band that was already one of the harder-rocking power pop bands around. Unfortunately, though, they've sacrificed some melody in the process, making Industry Giants an uneven affair. "Slow to Anger" demonstrates this right off the bat, a three-chord rant that's pretty hookless. The ship is righted a bit with the melancholy "Live and Breathe", recalling the Superdrag of Vitriol, and "I Only Want a Place to Stay" takes an equally satisfying less-is-more approach. But most of the rest of the disc comes up kind of short in the memorable melody department, making it a good candidate to cherry pick downloads from.

iTunes

New Fastball on the way (with free mp3)

As Professor Farnsworth would say: Good news, everyone!

Fastball is back with their first release in nearly five years, Little White Lies. And I'm happy to offer up the title track as a free download:

Little White Lies mp3

Pretty good tune - has a "The Way" way about it. The full album hits the street on April 17, timed nicely with the beginning of baseball season. Fastball, baseball, get it?