"Pop Does Not Mean Popular: A Polite Introduction to Hussalonia (2004-2014)" (Hussalonia)

[$9 to Download // $12 for CD // https://hussalonia.bandcamp.com/album/pop-does-not-mean-popular-a-polite-introduction-to-hussalonia-2004-2014]

I'm not really sure what I was thinking going into this album.   It's a collection of songs that span ten years and I'm still not really sure whether the term "Hussalonia" refers to the artist name or the label that these songs appear on or perhaps in some weird way both.   None of that matters though, and neither does my preconceived notions going into this.    The fact is it threw me for a curve because it isn't pop in the traditional sense of the radio sound (Ummm... Let's say One Direction for right now) but yet it does have elements of pop to it.

There are many kinds of music that can be tagged as "pop".    This has pieces of them with it being a cross between pop rock and bedroom pop, but as it likes to point out- and something that I really never think about- is that in these instances "pop" is never in reference to "popular", which is how it is traditionally used in music.    When was the last time you actually heard a bedroom pop album that was popular?    Even, for all of his many wonders and delights (and as he comes out in these songs also), Elliott Fucking Smith himself isn't really all that popular still.

I suppose I thought that this album might take sounds of a different variety and mix them around to sound like what is considered to be popular music.  (see: hiyohiyoipseniyo)  These are beautifully crafted songs that remind me of an acoustic Weezer, Buddy Holly, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed or something from Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records.   The fact that these songs can stay so off the radar for all of these years (and I'm just hearing about them now) does prove the title correct.

It's strange to think that your music can be catchy and all of the things you think of when you consider what the term "pop" represents musically, and yet they can just seemingly go by unnoticed.   And it's not just this-- there is so much more.    It's everything, man.    Should we be renaming bedroom pop to something else?   I'm not sure who to contact about that, but these songs are magnificent and I think we should spread them around so as to try and prove the title wrong: let's make them popular.