Way back in the previous century, my friends and I had an affectionate term we applied to songs that embodied the breezy, easy, wistful feeling summer gave us: we called them “top down” tunes. Somewhere in the ensuing years we dropped the term—probably because none of us had a convertible anymore. Also, summer no longer makes us feel that way. Middle age’ll do that.
But when I sat down to listen to the new album by Palatine-based band Push Puppets, the opening track threw me right back into that nineties feeling. Over an irresistibly jangly guitar, vocalist Erich Specht sings, “I imagined I’d find another / I haven’t found it yet,” and immediately I could feel the goddamn wind in my hair. It’s a great opening line—melodically bouncy and lyrically yearning—and you don’t even have to ask what variety of “another” Specht is singing about: it’s a girl. This is a nearly perfect summer tune (perversely released at the end of September), so of course it’s a girl.
“There’s No One Else Like Lynette” is just the opening salvo of what turns out to be a whole album of paradoxically bright, uptempo pop tunes about longing and regret. At first you think it’s a fluke; but no, Push Puppets’ official bio lays it right on the line: the band specializes in “songs with earworm melodies and shiny production that belie the often bittersweet sentiments in the songwriting” of frontman Specht. So there it is: happy-sad is his jam. And on “Allegory Grey,” he goes a long way toward making it yours.
There’s at least a soupçon of hope in “Lynette;” Specht sings, “Call when you know / That you are over him / You’re in control.” We don’t know if she ever will, but at least the door’s open. The next few tunes, however, are a tad bleaker (while remaining exquisitely tuneful). In “The Bane of My Existence,” Specht is “shouldering all the blame / But I won’t shed the tears / It’s killing me just the same / It’s worse than it appears.” It’s a minor-chord melody, but so propulsive, and woven through with such sparkling harmonies, that it lands you in the lap of joy. I don’t know if I’d call it a full-scale catharsis; let’s just call it catharsis lite.
Another totally infectious tune, “Lightning In a Dress,” pulls you in with the conventionally pop opening refrain, “She’s all I want, yeah / She’s aright / She’s alright,” and you think, oh, so we’re in a lighter mood now, Erich? But then the tune skids to a halt and he leans way into the mic and starts delivering an overcaffeinated, too-many-syllables-per-measure spiel: “I’ve been climbing the walls / Staring all night at the ceiling / Can’t get out of myself out this state / I’m tired and I — can’t — SLEEP.” It’s a bit abrupt, but I have to say, I found it relatable and charming.
There are a few outlier tunes—which in this context means, they don’t deal (or at least entirely deal) with romantic calamity. There’s the by-now obligatory commentary on our divided America in “October Surprise” (“We fan the flames / And we decide / Who’s in or who’s out / Don’t say it out loud / Poison the well / So no one can tell / What’s real and what’s not”). But for the most part, we’re mired here in the most delectable kind of first-person misery—and also in some wonderfully vivid imagery. “Could it have been more obvious / That the house by the volcano might explode?” for example. Or earlier, and more hauntingly, “Maybe it was the long winter / Sometimes the buds never flower / Nurtured the same as her neighbor / But she never opened her eyes.”
Altogether, a very fine, and highly individual, indie-pop outing. But “There’s No One Else Like Lynette”?—Top down, baby. Top down.
Robert Rodi is an author, spoken-word performer and musician who has served as Newcity’s Music Editor since 2014. He’s written more than a dozen books, including the travel memoir “Seven Seasons In Siena,” and his literary and music criticism has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Salon, The Huffington Post and many other national and regional publications. Contact: robert@newcity.com
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