Flatbasset Radio's Album Of The Week for the week of November 24th-30th, 2014:
The Person & The People - What A Drag
01. I Get Weird
02. Unwind
03. Vitamin C
04. Don't Fear The Richard
05. Give Me More
06. What You Do
07. Human Blimp Sees Flying Saucer
08. Brooklyn
09. Wrong Way
10. Year Long Drought
11. NYC FREAKOUT
12. Run
For the second week in a row here at Planet New Basset I'm dipping my toes back into St. Paul's bustling power-pop scene.
Hopefully some of you remember The Person & The People. I spent a week with their EP Zen And The Art Of Popular Music during the first week of January this year as an AOTW. Going back and reading what I wrote in that post I was surprised that I'd closed it out by saying "The Person & The People's St. Paul power-pop party! Alliteration, bitches!" Way to go, start of 2014 me.
Anyway, I mentioned in that column that I'd found my way to TP&P when their song "I Was Wrong" turned up as a Current Song Of The Day. That song was a straight-up rocker and I loved it unconditionally. Curiously, when I went back and checked out Zen And The Art Of Popular Music (the EP that preceded "I Was Wrong") I was surprised to find that the band's sound was less straight ahead power pop and much more expansive. The band had a habit of winding its way toward their hooks in a way that sometimes made the EP sound longer than its 24 minutes (though "Blue Haze" is a stone cold classic).
At that point I assumed that "I Was Wrong" was probably an outlier in the band's catalog, just a one-off genre exercise. And yet, here we have What A Drag, an absolute rocker of an album. Imagine if Superdrag defied all known scientific knowledge and impregnated Sloan. That's where we're at with What A Drag.
On this album the band continues their Benjamin Button-esque trajectory, shedding the jazzier layers of their early work and aiming straight for the pleasure center of the brain. From start to finish What A Drag is packed with more hooks than a bait shop. The lyrics range from indignant to saccharine to angry to exhausted, the verses swing, the choruses soar, and the production is clean & crisp. It's just about everything you could want from a power-pop album. Take a listen to album closer "Run" up above. Everything that's great about TP&P is summed up in that 1:45.
What A Drag is available via Land Ski Records and on The Person & The People's Bandcamp page. I highly suggest you pick it up in time to include it on your "Best Of 2014" lists.
