Hi, my name is David, and I'm a power popper. Jonny Polonsky's a power

popper too. In fact, his debut, Hi My Name is Jonny, is such a

great unrepentant, unabated, unreconstructed power pop disc that it's

certain to be a dismal failure. But that just makes me love it all the

more.

Before we go on, I suppose I should be clear about exactly what I mean

by "power pop." I do not use that term in the hopelessly broad sense

that's recycled nowadays to describe everything from Def Leppard to

Nirvana. No, I mean power pop in its original, specific sense:

bubblegum melodies pumped up over big, crunchy-chorded electric guitar

rock that was frequently (but not always) decorated with

overwhelmingly tender touches, like lush, soaring strings and sweet

backing choirs. You know the stuff I mean, the sort of music that

filled out the pop charts throughout the 70s: Bad Finger's "Baby Blue,"

Sweet's "Little Willie," Rick Springfield's "Jesse's Girl," ELO's "Do

Ya," any number of singles from Queen, The Babys and Cheap Trick, and,

most archetypal of all, the Raspberries' simply glorious "Go All The

Way."

I know I'm not supposed to enjoy this stuff. Like most unabashedly pop-ular

music, power pop is no longer considered cool, at least not by the jaded

critics and Alternative Nation cynics whose opinions are supposed to matter

most. Partly this is because power pop sounds blatantly commercial. Which is

no surprise: after all, the genre was created--long, long ago in a land far,

far away--by artists who actually believed it was a good thing to have their

music heard by as many people as possible. (I mean, can you imagine

that?) Mainly, though, power pop's uncool today because it tends to be

filled with big, mushy emotional gestures (and over-the-top production and

arrangements such emotions often deserve) that are as earnest and sincere,

as romantic and idealistic and even naive, as most alterna-fans are winking

and ironic. I mean, even someone like the-not-afraid-to-be-campy Freddie

Mercury was, like, passionately serious when he sang that someone or other

was his best friend, or that we are the champions of the world, or that

"Momma, my life had just begin and now I've gone and blown it all away," no

matter how kitschy Wayne and Garth made it seem. Nowadays, everyone

knows

that passionate and serious are the most horribly embarrassing things you

could possibly be. (And, no, Oasis is not the exception that proves the

rule. The Gallaghers may have succeeded with the pop half of the power-pop

equation, but that's only because they are careful to never let us see them

sweat. They aren't serious; they're stoic.)

None of this means that power pop has completely disappeared. The overrated

Matthew Sweet is as close as the genre has to a grunged-up poster child

these days, and bands like Red Kross, Jellyfish, Material Issue and Urge

Overkill have also been known to combine their big guitars with sweet-tart

melodies. Still, it's not like any of these acts are wildly popular. Adam

Schmitt, the genre's best contemporary artist­­his debut, World

So Bright, is as good a power-pop album as has ever been

made­­remains all but unknown.

I hope Jonny Polonsky isn't about to suffer the same fate, but I'm pretty

certain he will. Sure, Polonsky has listened to more than his share of Eric

Carmen, Freddie Mercury and Paul McCartney (an important proto power

popper), and you can hear their influence all over Hi My Name Is

Jonny. "Evil Scurvy Love," for example, is a better mid-tempo Paul song

than Paul has written in a decade or more (It even includes a "Rocky

Raccoon" pianie solo.), and throughout the disc, Polonsky's singing, while

less polished than Carmen's and Mercury's, has the same kind of all-out

sincerity you can find in "All By Myself" or "Somebody To Love." What's

really going to do Polonsky in, though, is what I hear as his biggest

influence of all. Jonny Polonsky is a huge (gasp!) Jeff Lynne fan. In

alternative circles, someone as heavy-handed, 'mersh, and fancifully

romantic as Lynne is bound to be not only uncool but downright reviled, but

Polonsky wears the ELO influence on his sleeve, like a hardcore power-pop

badge of honor. In fact, most of Hi My Name Is Jonny plays as if a

long-lost Electric Light Orchestra album had suddenly materialized out of

the blue. And a damn good one.

I should be specific again about what I mean. I ain't talkin' about the

pretentious classical-rock crap of early ELO albums like No Answer

and ELO II. And I also don't mean late period ELO discs like

Time or (ugh) Secret Passages, where Lynne's magic for pop

hooks and production had twisted into a parody of what had been (admittedly)

a pretty formulaic sound all along. No, I mean ELO's mid-70s glory days,

especially the band's proud and (often) power-pop triumvirate, Face The

Music, A New World Record, and Out Of The Blue.

Granted, Polonsky is aware enough to lose Lynne's orchestra, echo and

mass choir, but don't let that fool you. The catchy as-all-get-out "In

My Mind" uses layered backing guitars to get the same string effect,

and both that song and "Half Mind" are driven by Lynne's patented

metronome-acoustic-guitar chug before they burst into cool,

synthy-sounding "Mr. Blue Sky" guitar solos. The lonely cry of "Gone

Away" is as radio ready, and just plain perfect, as an unplugged "Sweet

Talkin' Woman" for the 90s, and the sweetly innocent "It's Good To

Sleep" (because, Polonsky concludes, "Dreams help you be") is a

super-slow-mo power ballad, a la the patented ELO sounds of "Telephone

Line" or "Steppin' Out."

Like ELO's, Polonsky's lyrical point of view is simultaneously silly

and slight and serious as hell. "Uh Oh," the most ELO-sounding song on

the album, relates the post-death experiences of man felled by a bad

batch of souvlaki, while the remainder of the disc deals with lost love

in the poppiest, most clever terms possible. "Love Lovely Love," which

ought to go down as a big-guitar power-pop classic, has Polonsky

doubting how a woman as wonderful as his girlfriend could ever go for a

nerd like him­­at least he doubts it until he sees her again

and all he can shout then is: "I break out with copious tears/

Rejoicing at the joy in my life at the moment." And he's serious.

"Love Lovely Love" is as contemporary sounding as anything on the disc,

so it's easy to see why it's also the album's first single. With the

"power" cranked up just a bit, and the "pop" played down a tad, it

easily demonstrates how straight a line can be drawn from the very

uncool power pop tradition that Polonsky loves to the very cool sound

and vision of revered "punk rockers" like Dave Pirner, Paul

Westerberg, John Rzeznik, and even Frank Black (who reportedly

"discovered" Polonsky). But the rest of the disc doesn't worry about

making connections. It just cranks the power pop, sweet and loud and

unashamed. I'm not ashamed to admit I love it.