CD of the Day, 7/8/11: The Red Button-As Far as Yesterday Goes

In 2007 Seth Swirsky & Mike Ruekberg, establish power poppers in their own right, teamed up as The Red Button to give us one of the top power pop albums of the decade with She's About to Cross My Mind. It was our #1 album of that year and came the closest to capturing both the sound - and more importantly, the spirit - of an early-to-mid period Beatles album. It wasn't a Rutles-style pastiche but rather a collection of a dozen or so extremely strong tunes that evoked the era without aping it. And what propelled it to the next level is that you had two distinct singer-songwriters bringing their songs to the table, with Ruekberg playing Lennon to Swirsky's McCartney.

So needless to say, expectations are high for the followup, and for the most part the expectations are met. There's a little bit less Beatles here, with an element of 70s-styled singer-songwriter sound in its place, but the end result is bound to please anyone who loved the first album. Things start strongly in the vein of the first album with Ruekberg's excellent and insanely catchy "Caught in the Middle", right out of the Help!-era playbook with Rickenbacker and harmonica galore. (His "I Can't Forget", which appears later in the album, is another great Beatles '65 homage.) Following is the sophisticated pop of Swirsky's title track, a moody midtempo number that compares favorably to some of the debut's standout tracks like "It's No Secret" and "Floating By". Speaking of "Floating By", the piano-based "Picture" is this album's closest cousin with its Bacharachian feel.

The passionate Ruekberg rocker "Girl, Don't" ups the jangle factor, while his lovely "Easier" evokes "Something". Swirsky meanwhile pines for a pair of ladies named "Genevieve" and "Sandreen", with the former the subject of a string-laden pop confection, and the latter a very 70s-sounding tune that's just as much breezy Stevie Wonder as breezy McCartney. Elsewhere "On a Summer Day" lives up to its title with its carefree melody and some great vocal interplay between our two principals, and the vaguely funky "You Do Something to Me" draws its inspiration from Paul Simon's early solo career. And like the debut with "It's No Secret", the album closes in strong fashion with "Running Away", a piano and guitar number that shifts the focus from the girls-of-their-dreams to an inward look that casts all that came before it in a different light, a well-played turn that grounds the album nicely.

Part of what made the debut a power pop phenomenon was that it came as a revelation; followups by definition in these cases always come without this advantage. But if it were possible to "unhear" the debut, As Far as Yesterday Goes would be just as much a jaw-dropper. and coming up with 12 near-perfect pop songs is never as easy as it sounds. For that, this album will rightfully earn its spot at or near the top of my 2011 list, and should earn an immediate spot on your music player of choice.

CD Baby | iTunes | sample at Official Site

CD of the Day, 5/6/10: Seth Swirsky-Watercolor Day

When the creative pop genius who made up one-half of The Red Button (who had my #1 disc of 2007) decides to unleash a solo disc, and when he gets Cloud Eleven's Rick Gallego to produce it, well it's, as Joe Biden would put it, a big f---ing deal. Watercolor Day is Seth Swirsky's second proper solo album, and it's conclusive proof that he hasn't lost his pop touch.

Now for those who heard his Beatlesque solo debut (2004's Instant Pleasure) and loved the fab Red Button disc, you might have expected the Anglophile Swirsky to spell the title Watercolour Day. But instead of setting his pop sights on 60s England, Swirsky has invoked the sounds of California and "sunshine pop" here. Instead of the swinging London sound of "Ooh Girl" we heard on She's About to Cross My Mind, another track from the Red Button album fits the new template a bit more: the Bacarach/Alpert influence heard in "Floating By". The best example of this is "Distracted", a piano-and-horn backed tune with "ba ba ba" vocals and an effortless flow. Swirsky also gets in tune with his inner early 70s solo McCartney, on the title track and "Song for Heather", a couple of acoustic guitar-based gems.

But it's summertime pop that dominates - "Summer in Her Hair" bears Gallego's stamp, and "Sand Dollar" is a buoyant romp. Brian Wilsonesque harmonies dominate "Amen" and "She's Doing Fine", and there are several shorter, interstitial tracks that add to the mood. And "I'm Just Sayin'" serves a kind of a medley/summation of the disc, with several of the earlier tracks on the disc name-dropped. It almost goes without saying that this is a easy top 10 of '10 candidate. And Swirsky promises a new Red Button disc in the fall, so the field might be fighting over just eight spots.

CD Baby | MySpace | iTunes

Breaking news.

Every once in a while here I get to break some news (which I never get around to fixing). It's a measure of how atrophied my journalism skills are since my days as sports editor of my high school newspaper that I've actually sat on this nugget of information for about two weeks before finally getting around to revealing it, but better late than never I suppose.

Anyway, the big news is that Seth Swirsky has informed me that there will be a new Red Button disc this year (June being the target date) as well as a solo followup to his 2004 release Instant Pleasure. So mark your calendars, and if you were contemplating suicide or anything like that in the near future, I've just given you two reasons to live.