Elsewhere: Pure pop for now people

The appearances by Robbie Williams and Travis reminded us again of the virtues of a particular kind of pop. You know the kind of thing: verse-chorus, verse-chorus, middle eight, guitar break, chorus-to-fade.

Sure you can vary it a little, but it's best kept simple. It's a deceptively familiar formula ("It isn't rocket science," as a Travisman said in an interview here) but few bands can master it. However, when they do rediscover it they offer a pleasant respite from the bland dance-pop cluttering the charts.

And the not-so coincidental arrival of a bunch of our own bands (the subject of this week's Time Out cover) suggest also that pop-rock and power pop might be back on the agenda again.

There's an alphabetical power pop lineage which starts with the Beatles, Badfinger, Big Star (whose In the Street is the theme to That 70s Show), Cheap Trick and the Dwight Twilley Band then runs through to Sweden's Wannadies (the summery hit of 96 with You and Me Song).

There are the power pop cult bands (the Shoes, Red Kross, the boozy and shambolic Replacements) and those who broke through big (the pompous Kansas at one extreme, the Knack at the concise, clever end).

And power pop is neatly cross-referential. Badfinger started on the Beatles' Apple label by covering McCartney's Come and Get It, Cheap Trick covered Daytripper, Magical Mystery Tour and recorded with Beatles' producer George Martin, and the Replacements had a song entitled Alex Chilton, a tribute to the main man in Big Star.

The Shoes took their name from an off-hand comment by McCartney about why they'd been called the Beatles ("We could have been called ... the Shoes.") and the cover of the Knack's debut album mirrored With the Beatles on the front and the A Hard Day's Night film set on the back.

And so on. Real trainspotter fun.

Despite the diversity in rock culture today, there is still a strong vein of power-pop running through it. Australians have had mainline into it (the Hoodoo Gurus, early Church, bands on the Summershine label) and we've been pretty good at it too (Garageland, Superette, the Chills in their most power chord moments).

It's always been big in the States and the latest in line is Cherry Twister, a three-piece out of Pennsylvania whose second album At Home with Cherry Twister (Castle) is the perfect marriage of Big Star and the Wannadies with a smattering of the Beach Boys.

First released on a small US indie-pop label, Not Lame Ltd, in February last year, it was hailed by the power-pop cognoscenti and in magazines such as Yellow Pills and Popsided. Picked up by When! Recordings, it will get British and European release in September, but is available through Castle Music (www.castle music.com) in Britain which recently released Dwight Twilley's excellent return to form on Tulsa and an outtakes album Between the Cracks, both reviewed in this column in March.

In one sense there's nothing new about what Cherry Twister do because they make pop directly in that lineage but the beauty and charm of power-pop is it always sounds fresh and summery, slightly familiar but always new. "I like my songs to be completely airtight," says singer-guitarist Steve Ward. "I want to be able to like every second of them, to melodically go for the kill every time."

And At Home boasts all the virtues of great power-pop: addictively catchy tunes, harmony vocals, concise guitar solos, three-minute songs - and he rhymes "Maryann" with "carryin." T'riffic.

Yes, it is the verse-chorus formula, but played with such enthusiasm it sounds like they just discovered it. The band has wowed crowds at power-pop gatherings such as Poptopia and International Pop Overthrow in LA, and at Nashville's Monsters of Pop festival, and they appeared on the Come and Get It tribute album to Badfinger. As they should.

This isn't rocket science. It's a rediscovery of what never really went away.