The Rockwells
Place & Time
(Migrant Records, 2008)

I like my fair share of power-pop, at least from the ’90s back: Cheap Trick, Big Star, Badfinger, Teenage Fanclub, and lately, heavy doses of Superdrag. There, I said it. So, it came as no surprise that when I gave Knoxville, Tennessee’s meticulously named band the Rockwells—heavily influenced by the above power-pop roll call—a spin, I was easily drawn to their songs. For a genre whose name was coined by Pete Townshend and was a music biz term to neuter “punk rock” into commerciality before the identifiable style of music came to be, it can now easily be passed off by haters as “that bubblegum crap” (as it was by the slack-jawed Thad on the South Park “Guitar Hero” episode). What’s beneath the surface of these melodic and mild compositions lies much of what has influenced the Replacements—recreating old-school, radio-friendly innocence, but from a place of sarcasm verging on fatalism, directness yet with remarkable musicianship, and of course, a love of ’60s Beat rock ‘n’ roll—and that means something to me. In this way, the Rockwells are no less heartening.

Keeping in line with the above power-pop formula, after a 22-second intro of horns, the first proper song on Place & Time is “Tess”; with its upbeat, fast-paced tempo it starts off with the lyrics, “Tess, I have to confess / You are the only one I could love / Tess, you’re such a success / Only my failure is holding you back.” And while there is this power-pop origin to the Rockwells’ overall sound, they consistently exercise a penchant for branching out into a more offbeat pop territory (think R.E.M. then Oakley Hall), especially with the inclusion of horns and male/female harmonies. Sometimes these added elements can have the band bordering on a delivery that’s too cheesy/cutesy, but they seem careful to counter that for a save with lyrics like the ones from “Hole in the Wall”: “You defend him time and again / ‘Cause the hours are light and the sex is good / But I think you’re waiting around / For something…” And, when these additional forays work, as they do in “Middle Eight Waltz”, a song that is an instrumental with only a series of nostalgic oohs for vocals, it adds texture and another layer to a record that at first seemed easy to pin down. Luckily, just when it all seems to be going in perhaps too many different directions, there’s a song like “Knot of Tension” that’s straight ahead power-pop with nice hooks and some tasteful guitar soloing, all done to great effect, to bring it all back home.

The Rockwells are made up of two sets of brothers: Fred (lead vocals, bass) and Jonathan (lead vocals, guitar) Kelly, and Tommy (lead guitar, organ) and Trace (drums) Bateman. And for a band you may’ve never heard yet, this is actually their seventh release. With Time & Place, if there’s ever an overriding sense of anything, it’s that this is definitively their uncompromising sound, no others. Again, though they are rooted in obvious influences, this band will have you hearing it in new ways. They aren’t afraid to take risks and do things that at first don’t necessarily seem to match up. It may not always pay off (“Circle”, with its gratuitous banjo, definitely strays a bit too far into a lunge for countrified epic), but more often than not it’s a gamble that tends to add more than it detracts, as with the old-timey feel of “Seventeen Days.”

All in all, at its core, this is a break-up record that doles out plenty of biting lyricism shot through with a keen pop sensibility. Even if there are flagrant moments of the band functioning only to indulge themselves as they wager alienating all others around them, well, that’s love.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

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