Hard Pop - Telethon
On Hard Pop, Telethon revel in their own excess as they perfect their brand of emotionally resonant power pop.
Showtunes are tacky and excessive. That’s the point, I guess—they are so cloyingly saturated with “this is the big emotional payoff” moments that you can’t help but feel something (even if that “something” is disgust). Very rarely do these songs filled to the brim with schmaltz-disguised-as-emotion amount to little more than gimmick; rarer still is musical theater composed of music that stands on its own as serviceable art. (Even Hamilton, one of the biggest cultural phenomena of the past decade, failed to produce a cohesive album.)
Hard Pop, the fourth full-length from Milwaukee-based power pop band Telethon, is not a musical. It isn’t even a rock opera (Telethon exhausted that medium with 2017’s epic The Grand Spontanean). But Telethon is led by Kevin Tully—a vocalist whose conviction and flare place him closer to Broadway than CBGB—and a band that crams into their music every over-the-top riff and melody that a single song can take. Although the album does not contain a single showtune, power pop rarely feels as theatric as it does on Hard Pop, and somehow, Telethon make that a good thing.
Hard Pop asserts its mission statement within its first seven seconds. Backed by an Eagles-indebted arrangement, Tully sings, “the magic of being a loser/is that no one has to find out” with the sincerest voice ever to sing something so bitingly hilarious. This opening song, “Loser / That Old Private Hell,” boasts one of the most anthemic riffs in recent memory, wrapped in a wall of sound so enthusiastic that Tully’s defeatism feels like unbridled optimism. Most of the album proceeds similarly, packing layer upon layer of excitement over the top of Tully’s incisive lyricism and showtune-y delivery until the result feels nothing short of life-affirming.
“(I Guess You’d Call It) An Undertone” ups the ante set by “Loser,” adding a saxophone solo and a shape-shifting chorus that makes its way through three ever-improving melodies. By the time the song’s last refrain comes around, Kevin Tully’s conspiracy-theorizing ramblings are so self-assured that it feels almost impossible not to agree. “House of the Future” morphs from a Foster The People-esque indie pop jingle to a pop-rock anthem that finds its speaker veering between frustration with and self-sacrifice for his partner, finding acceptance along the way. Just as “Chimney Rock” feels like it’s given its last flawless chorus, Telethon bring in guest vocalist Willow Hawks to deliver an even-more-flawless countermelody. “Youdon’tinspiremelikeyouusedto” pulls a similar trick, segueing from its chorus’s sidewinding melody to a jazzy saxophone solo to a full-band crescendo that turns its chant of “the story’s up to you” into a rallying cry.
The album’s low point comes on “Wanderparty,” the closest Telethon get to writing a Less Than Jake song. Tully’s vocal limitations, usually buried by his confidence, are laid bare on the chorus—the album’s weakest melody—but an unexpected ska break and a last-minute bridge save the song from forgettability. Even with its lacking arrangements, “Wanderparty” delves into some of Hard Pop’s essential topics aptly: namely, how do you reckon with your own doubts and mental barriers without losing all your friends? And how do you do all these things without any money? On “Wanderparty,” as on the rest of Hard Pop, Tully never lets this soul-searching become self-pity, as he remains too funny and the arrangements behind him too boisterous for anyone to think he takes himself that seriously. Although no real solution is offered, Tully never allows himself to wallow.
Most of Hard Pop exists in a world that blurs the lines between Jeff Rosenstock and Bruce Springsteen, a world where power pop bands have as much to learn from Thin Lizzy as they do from Cats. Telethon seem to take all their influences at face value (in their own words, “[without] a lack of interest or a sense that I’m above”), and hope that their audience listen to them the same way. Hard Pop demands suspension of disbelief. Its goofy synths and endlessly catchy melodies; its singer’s brazen-yet-flawed delivery; its humor and transparency: these things serve to strengthen, not obscure, the album’s emotional deliverance.
“Manila,” the final song on Hard Pop, tells a story filled with “stale emotion” and “congenial misery,” one where the best advice to give is, “we know you can’t be perfect, but at least try to be good.” Tully himself admits this story is cliché, as nearly everyone gets sick of their own life from time to time. This story—the story told throughout Hard Pop—may be cliché, but it is at times uniquely dark. The fact that the line “you’ll bring a lightness to your town and all those around” shines through all this murk is a testament to the power of excess.