ECHOBELLY
But echobelly–responsible for two albums so far, the 1994 debut Everyone’s Got One and last fall’s On–is far more spunky than punky. Though the band often draws comparisons to the latter-day Britpop of bands like Elastica and Blur (and to earlier New Wave acts like Blondie), echobelly’s best songs–“Insomniac” from the first album, “King of the Kerb” from the latest–recall some of the sheer fun of early bubblegum punksters like the Undertones, who sang songs about “chocolate and girls” (as they put it) as if their lives depended on it.
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pop musicians–from the boys in Green Day to the girls in Luscious Jackson–steadfastly avoid the label “pop,” which seems to have been degraded forever by its association with “pop” stars like Michael Bolton and Mariah Carey. In the American lexicon (and to the designers of radio playlists), music such as echobelly’s still qualifies as “alternative” or “college” rock, but its makers don’t really think of it as rock at all.
