The Maybellines
A La Carte EP
Best Friends Records

On this band’s website, they refer to their music as “power-pop” which is quite a hard idea to wrap one’s head around. The airy, lightweight sound that I got when I heard this disc for the first time was sure pop music, but the only power I heard was that which keeps their amplifiers on and the tape machines going.

The five songs that this quartet graces this new disc with are jaunty little pop numbers frosted with a smattering of Farfisa and fine harmonies from lead singer, Julie Dorough. For all that, there’s really nothing to these songs. The playing (especially the guitar work) comes off like the band considers this a boring day job which renders the songs plateau-like from the start. For all of Dorough’s fine sense of harmony, she also couldn’t sound more uninterested and uninteresting as a vocalist. For all their cute artwork and jangly sound, this pop music does not pop.