Giving some old-school pop a "Dreamboat" push

Dreamboat (Cassiel Records)

It's a well-worn axiom that young artists rewrite the songs they know and older artists the songs they've already written. So it's our good fortune that the fledgling Cassiel label has gathered 23 bands still young enough to wear their influences on their sleeves. At a time when so much popular music seems bogged down in self-reflection, Dreamboat sails into port bearing some sorely-needed hommage-pop, minus quotation marks, sans solipsism.

The connect-the-dots parlor game that this compilation facilitates is good fun: Spoon's "Primary (Nefarious Version)" equals Husker Du; Spare Snare tune their guitars to Sebadoh III on "Scrabble"; "'Til the End of Time" by Incinerator is Throwing Muses at their very sludgiest; and so on. Tipilli, Tiara, and Tiltmaster are three bands in search of a Big Star cover to recast in the Kinks' image, and the hunt is endearing to watch--they're all cuddly sorts, probably much too wimpy to hang out with the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Tipilli especially intrigue: their brittle, angular "Northern California" sounds like a Miro painting of mid-'60s mods on Top of the Pops.

The vitreous beauty of "Northern California" characterizes much of Dreamboat, highlighting a cohesion rare among compilations. Many reviewers dismissed this year's Push Kings' full-length as bland and derivative, but here their jonesing-for-Veruca-Salt apologia "Dahls' Girl" is compelling, its shimmering surface masking an intricate melodic web just as (and stay with me here) a lot of the early Madonna singles did (you know, like "Into the Groove," where there's, like, four hooks. I'm serious!). Another standout is Holiday's "Claudia Goes to Grad School," which appeared on the excellent Jaboni Youth compilation Childhood Friends two years ago, but the song finds such perfect company here that one doesn't mind dusting a few cobwebs off this luminous little tune. Though Holiday's ethereal pop sometimes feels lightweight, "Claudia" is simply weightless, and much of Dreamboat wafts along in the same thin air. There's nothing on Dreamboat you haven't heard before, but that doesn't mean you don't want to hear it all again.

--Jessica Winter

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