when "POP!" surprises

A few weeks ago, my friend Matt asked if I had heard of Gentleman Jesse. Then he used the magic words--"Power Pop"--to describe him as he let the needle drop. Truthfully, that (that someone who knows what I like would use that phrase to describe what he was about to play me) was all I needed to be convinced, and when this came out of the speakers, I wasn't surprised he got it so right:

I was surprised when a few weeks later, The Husband came home from playing ping-pong at our neighborhood bar with news that that Gentleman Jesse would be playing there in a few days.

And I was surprised to discover at that show that his music was so precisely what I wanted at just that moment: to walk out of the ladies room across the scuffed parquet floor and feel like I was in a bygone decade. To hear the warm organ and the kitschy background vocals and that particular drum beat that begs for handclaps (the one that always reminds me of the Ronettes's "Be My Baby"). To witness someone so efficiently utilizing the songwriting formulae of Elvis Costello or Springsteen or early Beatles or Eddie and the Hotrods and coming up with this bundle of desperate verve and melody:

It was Jesse's birthday to boot and it wasn't long before birthday cake was flying, people were dancing with a for-real sort of arms and legs a-go-go abandon, a woman walked on her hands across the dancefloor with her feet kicking the air, all to the sound of Johnny B Goode riffs a'ripping.

According to his record label's blog, the narrative of how Gentleman Jesse's latest output came to be goes something like this: he's been frustrated with some of the problems befalling his hometown of Atlanta as of late and been dealing with some tragedies that recently affected the Atlanta music scene. Rather than giving up, he wrote these songs. To quoth Douchemaster Records directly, "The record kicks off with 'Eat Me Alive,' an anthem of perseverance that Jesse undoubtedly used as a demon-exercising tool. The album is bookended by another mover titled 'We Got To Get Out of Here,' a song that turns out to be less about getting out of an actual location and more about getting out of a state of mind that makes you afraid of it. Stylistically, Jesse never strays from his bread and butter, which is short, hook driven, and delicately patterned rock n roll songs." 

Power pop, rock n roll, damn catchy--whatever you want to call it, sometimes an old formula can be just the right way for dealing with now. I don't know why it still surprises me when pop songs prove they can really do something, have power.

(Update: the clips originally posted expired so I had to change them.)