Alien Snatch Records, Snap!! Records, Beluga Records, June 29, 2020
The Speedways are charming songwriters with bunches of hooks.
The Speedways have a couple of records under their belts now and they’ve made one thing perfectly clear: they have a way with hooks. On Radio Sounds, The Speedways go on the charm offensive with earworms and contagions while singing about the trials and tribulations of love.
Radio Sounds mostly hits best when they keep things bouncing and buzzing with energy. Songs like “The Day I Call You Mine” and “Good Girls Don’t Break Hearts” are positively timeless blasts of upbeat power pop. Both have wonderful guitar hooks and great vocal melodies. “Day” has some of my favorite backing vocals and harmonies on the record while “Good Girls” plays out some great hooks with cool Rentals-style synths. “Your Brown Eyes Look So Blue” is a different beast. It’s still a bouncing energetic pop song, but it’s got a sort of swing to it and some of the catchiest melodies on the record. And while “In A World Without Love It’s Hard To Stay Young” offers up doses of melancholy on the tempered verses, the choruses burst like nuggets of sunshine and the backing vocals sound like they’re falling from the heavens.
That melancholy shot is not a one-off on Radio Sounds. In fact, The Speedways manage to pull off a couple more melancholy numbers. “Kisses Are History” is a mid-tempo jaunt. To accompany regretful lines like “you were a mystery, and now your kisses are history”, The Speedways settle in with pretty and contemplative guitars, letting any buzz fall by the wayside. Simply, it’s pristine pop music. “This Is About A Girl Who Loves The Sun” follows suit to lesser results. It opens fading in with chiming sounds before going with a more depressive verse and a sort of dark chorus. The bridge of the song gets really hooky and is my favorite part, but the despondent feel to the song runs a little too deep for me.
On Radio Sounds, The Speedways also drift into a sort of Americana version of power pop. “Empty Pages” gives off a semblance of twang in the guitars and hews closer to Big Star territory. The song is decent for the first couple of minutes, but really comes into its own during the stretch run with some nice hooks and fantastic backing vocals. “Telephone Lies” plays around with some cool bells that play the melody and the rolling power pop on the verses sound sort of indebted to Old 97’s or something, but those same verses elicit a sort of shoulder shrug from me. Thankfully, the bridge is great and the chorus is where this song’s at. These melodies are downright infectious.
Radio Sounds proves The Speedways to be power pop savants. After the solid Just Another Regular Summer, they’ve brought in some more nuance and managed to write some of their best stuff.
You might like this if:
- You like your power pop with a bit of life, a bit of nostalgia, and a little melancholy
You might not if:
- You either want nothing but sunshine or you want no sunshine-bounce at all
ryan is a reviewer and news editor for TGEFM. He’s very secretive, he might be an alien.
