Written by: Dave Cantrell

Put two songsmiths with deep pedigrees in a room together on and off for three years and, well, frankly, you might be pretty disappointed. Fortunately, in the case of Paul Myers (founding head of Toronto-based 90’s power-pop phenoms The Gravelberrys) and former (and current) Orange Peel guitarist John Moremen (see also: DC’s The Neighbors, Jimmy Silva’s Goat 5, plus gigs with Half Japanese and Flamin’ Groovie Roy Loney), the results are 100% grade A translucent pop. Under the moniker The Paul & John, the pair handled everything in Moremen’s studio before heading into a collab with lead Peel and Mystery Lawn studio maestro Allen Clapp, whose arrangements and production ensured the project went from ‘very fine indeed’ to ‘pure superb.’ Trading solos and vocals, the two push each other to the sublime limit. Plush with harmonies, melodies spilling everywhere like effortless manna, this, if I may state it with a bit of apt reductivism, is what the Raspberries would have sounded like had they been the Beatles.

The allusive, nostalgia-debunking “Long Way Back” is as punchy as its punky subject matter if twice as bouncy catchy; the cleverly-named title track (the name of the San Francisco neighborhood where Moremen lives repurposed as an emotional glow and why has no one ever thought of that before?) is a piece of triumpant Chiltonism; “When I Lost My Way,” with its Byrdsian jangle and plangent burst of guitar makes rueful sound poignantly joyful, as it should sound when it’s been this well survived. Then there’s the illustrious power-pop epic “Can’t Be Too Careful,” crashing upward and outward in a thrillingly concise three-minute forty-five second textbook example of how superlative this form can be, a statement made idle by the killer hook of a change that takes you out with a gossamer, goosebump shiver.

Polished but visceral, the personal as expressed by the innate chime of the universal, this is a wow of a record that if you have any fondness for the referents cited in this review you will hasten to obtain. Myers and Moremen actually live up to what might be implicitly expected from two intensely talented songwriter-guitarists names Paul & John.