'Sad Sounds of the Summer' received some press as a "Best of 2009' release in various websites and blogs. Check it out!  

Pop Underground
http://popunderground.wordpress.com/2010/01/03/audities-best-of-2009
The Rock N Roll Report
http://rockandrollreport.com/a-year-in-review-rrr-staff-weigh-in-on-their-top-picks-of-09-part-1/
Beat the Indie Drum-Essential Albums of 2009
http://www.beattheindiedrum.com/?p=340
John Borack's Top 20 of 2009
http://www.facebook.com/jborack#/notes/john-borack/2009-top-20-cds/276473440751
The Power Pop Show (KSCU 103.3 FM)
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=183947813&blogId=522828666
Pop Chef (Spain)
http://popchef.blogia.com/2009/123101-mis-discos-favoritos-de-2009.php 
David Bash's Top 50 of 2009
http://absolutepowerpop.blogspot.com/2010/01/david-bashs-top-100-of-2009-1-50.html
Power Pop Station (Brazil)
http://powerpopstation.blogspot.com/2010/01/top-100-albuns-top-10-eps-2009.html
Scott Greenberg (WGWG 88.3 FM)
http://www.facebook.com/friends/?id=1179487806&view=everyone#/notes/scott-greenberg/greenbergs-top-10-albums-of-2009/248070890578
Power Pop Review (UK)
http://powerpopreview.blogspot.com/2010/01/best-albums-of-2009.html
King Wart-Top Ten of 2009
http://popunderground.wordpress.com/2009/12/31/kingwarts-top-albums-of-2009/
Absolute Power Pop
http://absolutepowerpop.blogspot.com/2009/12/absolute-powerpop-top-100-of-2009-6-50.html
Powerpopaholic
http://www.powerpopaholic.com/
Power Pop Action! (Spain)
http://s1.elforo.de/powerpopaction/viewtopic.php?t=6368

Mystery Spot (2004) was voted one of the 'Best of the decade' releases at Power Pop Action! (Spain)...DISCOS FAVORITOS DE LA DÉCADA

We've compiled a digital release of cover songs as a free download via Rapidshare and Bandcamp. Hopefully, you'll be able to take advantage of this free download and enjoy our versions of classic songs by The Beatles, The Who, George Harrison, Elvis Costello & Big Star.

It also happens to be a wonderful companion disc to Sad Sounds of the Summer.    

 

track list-

You Like Me Too Much-The Beatles

Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand-The Who

Wah Wah-George Harrison

No Action-Elvis Costello & the Attractions

Thirteen-Big Star 


Bandcamp... http://chrisrichardsthesubtractions.bandcamp.com/

(ed. note - It seems like the new Chris Richards CD is a big hit here at The Rock and Roll Report. Aaron Kuperberg gave it a rave back in April and Scott Homewood seems to enjoy it as well. Two reviews for the price of one! Sounds like a keeper!)

Let me tell you: nothing gets me ready for the summer quite like a great power pop record! I can remember when I was eighteen and driving the first car I had bought myself. I had just graduated high school and was determined to celebrate the hell out of the Summer before going to college in the Fall. The car was a gift I had bought myself as I was sick of bumming rides off friends and just hanging around waiting for someone else to take me somewhere. It was MINE, dammit! Nothing is quite like that feeling when you’re that young, having your own car and being alone on the road without your parents driving with you (or driving you) and being able to go where you want to go when you want to go there - the whole calling your own shots thing. The first thing I used to do after inserting the key into the ignition and starting it up was turn on the radio and try to find some sort of driving rock and roll I could sing (poorly) along to. Cheap Trick, Blondie, Elvis Costello, Greg Kihn (c’mon - you know you love it) - and all the other great catchy new wave of the day just made driving as fast as you could more fun than it should’ve been.

Somehow, I survived that summer, Lord knows I did so much partying and racing around I probably shouldn’t have - but I am glad I did, because besides all of the other cool things in my life, those artists and tons of new ones who have released incendiary power pop over the years have kept me charged up for more summers and every other time of year. In fact, I have been tuning up my car recently, just waiting to hit the open road with this new Chris Richards CD I knew his “people” would be sending me to review. You see, I have all of Richards’ previous CDs and Richards has long been one of the better craftsmen at creating propulsive power pop and has spent the last decade or so proving it on the four solo albums he’s released during that time, all of which I enjoy immensely.

Thankfully, this album is no different as Richards once again proves he can go catchy-chorus-for-catchy-chorus with the heavyweights like Fountains of Wayne and even though his songs are not as bombastic as some, with the big drums sound etc, Richards hits all the right spots with his Tommy Keene-like style. Another great thing about Richards’ music besides his guitar work being simply spot-on riff and solo wise, with a bunch of sleazy rock style thrown in is his vocals. Not an overpowering singer, Richards’ voice nonetheless embodies the rock and roll spirit as much as Tom Petty’s or Neil Young’s and his vocals are perfect for the kinds of songs he writes. For me, yet another winner from Richards.

Any fan of a catchy, well-written song that just sounds great when you’re driving, dancing, fighting or fucking will love this new album by Chris Richards. Not only is he good at what he does, but he understands it. Just because there isn’t a missed trick on this album, doesn’t mean that Richards just throws them all in there willy-nilly. Richards knows when to throw in a middle-eight so good it’ll make you miss Badfinger and when to throw in some handclaps and ohh-ohh-ohh’s so that the whole thing makes sense. This is not a pastiche of a long-forgotten style. This is some of the best power pop you’re going to hear this year and all by an artists who excells at it. Trust me: buy this album and you’ll be singing these songs to the beach, to the picnic, to the bar, to your friend’s house etc. and before you know it, you’ll have a new favorite CD. I can say I’ve seen it happen….because it happened with me.

Scott

Everyone knows Detroit's a great town for music, no matter what one likes to hear — soul, R&B, hard rock, punk, garage rock, blues, hip-hop, electronic and lots of flavors in between. But what about the Rodney Dangerfield of rock genres, the underappreciated form known as power pop? You know, the stuff with lots of hooks and harmonies, big guitars, soaring melodies, and lyrics celebrating the joys and perils of longing for girls? Detroit may have produced the Romantics. And early on, it was both a home and inspiration to the great Marshall Crenshaw. But past those names, casual observers would be hard-pressed to name many notable pop acts that have emerged from the city.
Detroit does have a flourishing power pop scene, however, even if one has to go looking for it. And this Wednesday through Saturday, there will be a gathering of the tribes, so to speak, at Paycheck's for the 2009 Detroit International Pop Overthrow festival. IPO began as a small Los Angeles festival in 1998, and has since expanded into a series of regional events held across the United States and the UK. This year's local bash marks the second IPO festival in Detroit, with 26 area bands and a handful of out-of-towners kicking out the hooky jams all weekend.
While they're not the "headliners" — there's no such animal at IPO — Chris Richards and the Subtractions are certainly one of the acts to watch at the Detroit festival. The band is the latest project from the Livonia-based singer, guitarist and songwriter who's been a fixture on the area music scene since the late 1980s. Richards has made fine records with other bands, but his new Gangplank album, Sad Sounds of the Summer, may be his best work to date, a top-shelf example of contemporary power pop that offers plenty of tough guitar and rocking rhythm along with glorious melodies and spot-on harmonies from Richards, bassist Todd Holmes and drummer Larry Grodsky.
Richards started playing rock 'n' roll when he was a Churchill High School student in Livonia, teaching himself to play bass and forming a band with some friends that they called the Noel Redding Experience. "I'm not sure I was a huge Jimi Hendrix fan, with the exception of maybe 'Crosstown Traffic,'" Richards recalls with a laugh. "But Noel had the coolest hair! We didn't have any real body to our hair, though, so we didn't come out with the Noel look or anything."
And although hair metal was the order of the day at Churchill in the mid-'80s, the Noel Redding Experience was covering tunes by the Hoodoo Gurus, the Violent Femmes and the Waterboys, as Richards began writing what he cheerfully describes as "moronic two- to three-chord songs."
"We were the only [local] band at that time playing original songs," Richards adds "And they were just God-awful! But I think everyone really respected the fact that we at least wrote our own songs."
By 1986, Richards had moved from bass to guitar and gotten a bit more serious about his music, forming Hippodrome with his brother Kyle Richards on bass, Doyle Dean on drums and Keith Klingensmith on guitar and vocals. The band released a cassette-only EP in 1987, Novelty, recorded by the then-fledgling Dave Feeny, who now runs Tempermill Studios. By the time Hippodrome recorded their first long-player, 1989's Dogbunny, Kyle was out of the band and Todd Holmes had stepped in as their new bassist. (Dogbunny was also one of Detroit's first locally released CDs, which Richards notes just as the format threatens to go the way of the cassette.)
Hippodrome called it quits in 1990, and after Richards and Klingensmith were invited to record some songs for a power-pop compilation, they put together a short-lived studio project, the Phenomenal Cats, who released a six-song EP. Eager to start playing live again, Richards formed the Pantookas with bassist Kenny Quick and drummer Larry Grodsky, boasting a tougher guitar sound and more aggressive approach than the cooler and more streamlined sounds of Hippodrome. The Pantookas cut an album in 1997, Salad, that earned positive press (including a rave in Option) but didn't break out locally. Two years later the band split up.
But if Richards wasn't making a major impact on the Detroit scene yet, someone was clearly listening — the international power pop community is a network that enthusiastically spreads the word about new artists around the globe; in 1994, Richards was included on Hit the Hay, Vol. 1, a compilation assembled by Swedish pop fanatic Jerker Emanuelson, who later released the Phenomenal Cats disc. Since then, Richards has contributed tunes to pop anthologies released in Japan, Spain, Australia and Canada, and he estimates that 70 percent of the physical sales on the new Sad Sounds of the Summer has been overseas. (Richards is less certain about the breakdown of growing sales through digital retailers like iTunes, though, saying "You can't really see the digital stuff — you don't know who's buying it; you just get checks!")
Keeping track of his fan base outside of the country — and outside the English language — is a challenge for him. "The blogosphere seems to be the new thing, especially in Spain," Richards says. "I've been reading, or trying to read, these [music] blogs, and we'll try to translate them but obviously there's no translation tool that gets every single dialect. So you'll get the thing and it'll say, 'Songs spoken from the word of God!' I don't think they meant to say that! [Laughs] There's no way they said this, but there's no way it's negative, either!"
After years of playing with a handful of bands and releasing most of his material through his own Dogbunny label, these days Richards is teamed up with trusted friends he's known for years. Subtractions Holmes and Grodsky are frequent collaborators, and Feeny not only recorded and co-produced Sad Sounds, he released it through his own Gangplank Records imprint.
"The Subtractions complement me better than any band I've ever had," Richards says. "And the reality is that Todd played bass with me in Hippodrome for about five or six years, maybe even longer. And then Larry played drums in the Pantookas, for five or six years. So in combination, I feel like I've played with those guys forever."
With more than two decades under his belt on the Detroit scene, Richards has no illusions about achieving overnight success. But it's clear he still loves playing and recording, and he isn't about to give up anytime soon. Richards displays the effervescent enthusiasm of a true fan when he talks about the bands he loves — from the Kinks, the Who and Elvis Costello to Sloan, the Posies and Teenage Fanclub. He also mentions local faves such as the Singles and the Prime Ministers, both also playing this year's IPO Detroit fest, and the Friendly Foes. And Richards is incapable of disguising how jazzed he is when he mentions that the legendary UK 'zine Bucketful of Brains contacted him for a review copy of Sad Sounds. He's also jazzed about the upcoming IPO gig, saying, "You get these bands that just love, love playing music, and getting them all under one roof is such a great experience to see. Seeing seven or eight pure pop bands together, that's an experience that you're never going to have in this city, except for these four nights."
"When people walk into a bar and you see us — not that we're old guys or anything — but you get the perception of people thinking, 'What are these guys about?'" Richards says. "Especially when we're playing with bands who are kids, maybe 19 or 20. And, really, I'm 40 and I have a 16-year-old daughter — so, yes, these guys are kids! The hipster's kind of scene doesn't quite fit the old guy mentality. And those two groups are now officially not mingling, at least not in Detroit. But sometimes we can convert a room, that's for sure. Because I still think in our heart of hearts that we're a very entertaining trio, and we don't run out of gas. Live, we definitely have to strip the songs down because we can't do those layered guitars; we can't do those layered harmonies. But we make up for it with a punch. And with a combined age of about 125 years between us, I take pride in that!"
Saturday, April 11, as part of the four-day International Pop Overthrow festival at Paycheck's Lounge, 2932 Caniff, Hamtramck; 313-874-0909. Music begins at 7:30 p.m.; $8 cover. For more info and a full band schedule, visit internationalpopoverthrow.com...