“yellow_pills_4”
Yellow Pills
Volume 4
Big Deal
These Yellow Pills comps keep coming out, and it’s really, really difficult to single one out as being the best. Yellow Pills is a magazine devoted to pop – not to be confused with pap, or as editor Jordan Oakes puts it, “second-hand alternative product.”
Combining tracks from up-and-comers, established names (like the Plimsouls, Material Issue and Jason Falkner) and some rescued never-heard-ofs, this compilation clearly displays the variety and overall splendor of Pop, that genre where getting the song going over and over in your head is the goal. The sounds range from lush production to bare-bones demos and four-track antics. But overall, every single one of these songs is memorable.
Anton Barbeau’s “Octagon” is a sparse, in-your-speakers number with a surprisingly textured guitar solo and a sweet, harmonic ending. Material Issue’s “swan song,” a cover of the Grassroots “I’d Wait a Million Years” blasts through with such clean power that I really feel they’re prematurely gone. Also of note is the opening track, “Stood In The Rain,” from Florida’s Four O’Clock Balloon, a tune whose choral hook is as welcome and soothing as a down comforter on the coldest night of the year.
Needless to say, if you can appreciate the effort that goes into crafting a melody and a song, this is the record for you. Big Deal, P.O. Box 2072, Peter Stuyvesant Station, New York, NY 10009
