A Little Sunday Night Power Pop

The new single, “Heaven Help Me,” from the pride of Zion, Illinois – The Shoes – from Ignition, their first album in 18 years.

There was a time when power pop like this dominated the Chicago music scene, from late ’70s/early ’80s bands like Cheap Trick, the Shoes, and Off Broadway …

… to Material Issue in the early 1990s:

But it wasn’t just a Chicago thing. Of course, there was the Nick Lowe-Dave Edmunds project, Rockpile, whose Seconds Of Pleasure LP essentially defined the genre:

And more obscure acts like Bram Tchaikovsky, whose 1979 song “The Girl Of My Dreams” might be the purest power-pop song of all:

And speaking of obscure, here’s Atlanta’s contribution to the power-pop scene, the Producers:

Finally, no brief compilation of largely unknown power-pop acts would be complete without the Records, another UK band that mastered the sound in the 1980s:

So, there you go. There’s your Sunday night sound track. Now, don’t you feel better?