Idolator

In the current climate of ruthless blog scrutiny, good records can easily disappear with little or no press and supposedly major albums are forgotten within weeks of release. With that in mind, we bring you Second Spin, where we'll take a look at records that have either slipped between the hype cracks or re-evaluate albums after the press cycle has left them for dead. (The occasional just-released rave may sneak in there, too.) This time a compilation provides a look at the current crop of "pop-punk" bands escaping the attention of both the radio and the blogosphere.

Recently, I wrote a piece attempting to link various poppy, punkish bands like Be Your Own Pet and Times New Viking into some kind of subaltern united front for 2008. After finishing, I realized I had unconsciously slighted a large swathe of underground-ish pop-punk that's already all but been written off by my music hack peers, that I snubbed an entire scene to focus on a few semi-pop faves with a decent press push. I should have known better. Somewhere, 16-year-old Jess was drumming his fingers on a study hall desk in irritation that his grown self had seemingly forgotten these catchy, sweetly sardonic, seven-inch-friendly songs about girls, boys, and the dumb things they routinely do to one another, songs that made high school tolerable for many bespectacled kids left cursing the fates come prom time.

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Just in case you were worried that the departure of the old boss meant that Idolator's commitment to three-minute power-pop-punk songs has now been completely supplanted by a lot of "crazy" "ethnic" music and L.A. Guns b-sides and teenpop (R.I.P. Leslie Carter's career), let it be known that I, too, have a closet full of Bouncing Souls albums and Lookout! Records seven-inches and mixtapes with J Church songs on them. Which is why I love New Jersey's the Ergs, a nerdtacular trio who sound (and dress) like the mid-'90s never ended. With the exception of Jay Reatard (who exists on his own reatarded plane), they're making the best scratchy, slightly sloppy, fairly stupid, three-chord (at most), three-minute (at most) pop-punk tunes of the last few years. (Think church basement and VFW hall pop-punk, not ready-for-their-closeup Warped Tour pop-punk.) The Ergs' songs are largely about girls—because there are some traditions, stretching back to at least the Buzzcocks, that you probably just shouldn't screw with—and "we can watch TV and maybe listen to some Husker Du" pretty much describes my ideal date circa 1994. There are a clutch of mp3s to download at their Web site and you can listen to some others at their MySpace page. Then perhaps break out those stinky-ass Chuck Taylors and catch them at an all-ages watering hole near you this summer.

The Ergs [MySpace]