NYC’s Smart-Pop Underground: Having A Moment

It must be something in the air—literally. Looking for a root cause of what we’ll call New York City’s smart-pop scene, let’s go all the way back to 1963 when native New Yorkers Cynthia Weill and Barry Mann’s “On Broadway” became a hit for NYC group The Drifters. What do you suppose all that business about “there’s always magic in the air” was really about anyway? Sure, commercially minded songwriters like Weill and Mann expressed the idea in Disney-type terms. But if you want to get down to the real nitty gritty, some unnatural combination of elements in the janky mess that New Yorkers breathe every day must actually contain an impetus for off-kilter art.

Short of radioactive spider bites, excessive gamma ray exposure, or some other Marvel universe origin story, that’s as good an explanation as any for the preponderance of melodically robust, left-field alt-pop that’s been bubbling up in New York for decades now. Underground at its core, NYC “smart-pop” is probably too idiosyncratic to translate to the mainstream, but anyone with a love of hefty hooks and slightly skewed lyrical visions can tune into its wavelength.

Offering a comprehensive history of the movement-by-default would require more real estate than we’ve got right here. Instead, let’s look in on the state of the New York smart-pop sphere as it stands at this very moment. It turns out 2024 has been an exceptional year in that regard, and it isn’t even over yet. So, here’s a stroll through some of the snappiest albums to emerge from the realm in recent months.

BUBBLE

Bubble has hung around long enough to celebrate their 30^th anniversary this year with the release of Live on WFMU. Like Bubble, FMU has been brilliantly catering to slightly off-center tastes long enough to become an underdog institution. The album commemorates the band’s big birthday by offering up their live-in-the-studio WFMU recordings from across the decades, going all the way back to 1994. Fronted by Dave Foster, the band began as a trio including bass man Russ Alderson and drummer Tommy DeVito, but in keeping with its namesake, Bubble has expanded over the years to include the frighteningly fierce talents of vocalist Rembert Block, guitarist Mike Fornatale, and keyboardist Charly Roth.

Admired by everybody from Television bassist Fred Smith to Nada Surf frontman Matthew Caws, Bubble seems to answer the question, “What would it sound like if your earbuds went crazy on a subway trip from Williamsburg to the Lower East Side and started playing The Beatles in one ear and XTC in the other at the same time?” Bubble’s “Steer the Wheel” occupies the new live album in the form of a 2001 WFMU session, but viewing a performance from their 2024 30^th birthday show at New York City’s storied Mercury Lounge tells you more about where the band is at today.

MARK BACINO

Mark Bacino’s story goes back to the ‘90s, too—that’s when his debut album met the world with an openhearted take on the classic power-pop template, with all the airy harmonies and tuneful jangle you’d want from such an endeavor. Praised by Rolling Stone and respected by his NYC peers, Bacino managed a feat frustratingly beyond the grasp of some artists under the power-pop umbrella—he matured. By the time he arrived at 2010’s Queens English, an album playing off of his borough of residence and named for his studio, Bacino had advanced on pretty much all fronts: production, arrangement, songwriting, and delivery.

But then, other concerns pulled him away from releasing his own albums until his 2024 reemergence with Top of the World. If his musical journey began as a contemporary variant on (insert name of seminal ‘60s pop/rockers here), these days Bacino seems more like a modern-day Harry Nilsson, adjusting for the shift in era and the move from the boulevards of L.A. to the unassuming avenues of Queens. The prospect of a new Bacino record was so appealing it even inspired the owner of long-inactive Parasol Records (home to Bacino’s first two albums) to reactivate the label just to put it out. “Obviously, I’m happy to be back working with my old friends,” says the multi-instrumentalist. “It feels like home, full circle in a way, and I’m honored that they would reboot this cool label, with all its history, via my humble little album.”

ELJIN MARBLES

You probably thought you would never rock out to a track called “It’s Impossible to Overestimate the Impact of Duchamp” or hum along to a hook-slathered concept album about maverick mid-century L.A. art scene figures like Wallace Berman, Walter Hopps, and Edward Kienholz. But Eljin Marbles are here to prove you wrong. Cool Fires is their first album, but leader Dann Baker spent the ‘90s making New York City safe for intellectual art-pop in the band Love Camp 7. Aided by multi-instrumental threat George Barba Yiorgi and other worthies, Dann taps into memories of his Los Angeles youth, in which his hip mom turned him on to that city’s cutting-edge visual artists.

It might seem like an unlikely inspiration for a modern rock record, but that’s what makes Cool Fires such a startling achievement. Unfailingly melodic, endlessly surprising, and completely fresh, it touches on power pop, prog, indie rock, and the kind of wily, adventurous art-rock practiced in the ‘60s by the likes of The Mothers and Autosalvage, but ends up occupying a space utterly its own. The songs move in ways as revolutionary as the art they celebrate, sometimes sounding nearly through-composed. But for all the eccentricity, the whole thing goes down way more easily than anyone would have any right to expect.

8X8

Lane Steinberg just might be the Robert Pollard of the little genre we’ve invented here. Insanely prolific and touched with some sort of skewed pop genius, Steinberg has swung his hammer in too many projects to tally here, with The Wind, Tan Sleeve, The Gershwin Brothers (also featuring Bubble’s Dave Foster), and his voluminous solo discography being just a few. His latest, the duo 8X8, crosses not only mere musical borders but the kind outlined by thick, dark lines on global maps.

Steinberg and his 8X8 partner, Alexander Khodchenko, have never even met in person. But they’ve connected in a deep way through the music they assembled together for Life During Wartime. Like Steinberg, Khodchenko is a multi-instrumentalist overachiever expertly blending the elegant and the eccentric. The big difference is that he lives in war-torn Ukraine, and he collaborated remotely with Steinberg while his country was literally coming down around his ears. Does that inform the music? How could it not? But this is pop art, not a news correspondent report. And even if you had no idea where or how this lush, varied work was built, you’d just as likely be dazzled by it.

WARD WHITE

Ward White could almost be considered a poster boy for New York smart pop, except for one tiny technicality: He no longer lives in New York. Seemingly the victim of a strange attraction to triple-digit temperatures, he currently makes his home in the Southern California desert. But he made his rep and established his style during his many years as a New Yorker, so he is hereby granted emeritus status.

Here Come the Dowsers makes good use of White’s current Californian playground, framing its songs with the trappings of Old Hollywood, a subject ripe for exploration but too seldom taken on. Michael Penn’s Mr. Hollywood Jr. 1947 is the only other example that springs to mind and could be considered a cousin to White’s workout. But for all of Penn’s considerable prowess, he has never come off like The Associates’ vocally athletic mouthpiece Billy Mackenzie magically endowed with the songwriting gifts of Imperial Bedroom-era Elvis Costello. Of course, even that analogy only offers part of the picture; the story White sets out here teems with so many commanding characters that it could be an Old Hollywood movie in itself, which is probably just as he intended it.

-Jim Allen

Photo: Bubble (press photo)