Country artist, Tommy Botz did some time in the Ohio state prison where he originally wrote “Teddy Bear” and a whole lot more while staying there and getting back on the recovery train. This song came together over a fellow inmate’s sadness of hearing that his daughter had just died, so it’s a stay fresh result of that difficult circumstance in which to write music. “Teddy Bear” didn’t get recorded overnight though, and that involves much more to tell than meet’s the eye of most songs. This is always where a challenge is worth taking to come up with your best, and Botz pulled out all stops to do that.

A sly guitar lick welcomes us with open arms as we enter “Dre@m Vaca$ion,” the all-new single from the one and only Dan Rico, and it doesn’t take long before it finds some company in a blushing bassline just waiting to come alive in the first verse. Rico soulfully dispatches a moody melody as we press forward; it’s shapeless at first, but slowly it starts to evolve before our very ears into a defined, muscular entity that will texturize every stitch of music that we hear in the song. The percussion is effervescently produced, bouncy and rambunctious in execution, and while it tries desperately to intrude upon the streamlined string section, its efforts are futile, as there’s nothing on this planet capable of getting in the way of these riffs and surviving.

In “Hey Everybody,” the jazzy spat of instrumental violence that ushers us into Little King and the Salamander (demos), The Merrymaker’s Orchestrina make it abundantly clear that they came to do some serious business in their latest trip to the recording studio, and that business consists of rocking our stereos with unstoppable grooves and basslines that could bludgeon an elephant to death. Divided into two uniquely stylish batches of psychedelic rock and alternative folk, Little King and the Salamander (demos)’s “What Fools We Can Be,” “White Light and Lullabies,” “She’ll Do Anything,” “Particle Craze” and “I’ll Be (Kisses at Your Door)” are among the most polished songs that the band has ever committed to record, and though these are allegedly unfinished demo tapes that represent only the most carnal of ideas that the band developed while jamming together, they don’t feel incomplete or fragmented in the least. I wasn’t very familiar with The Merrymaker’s Orchestrina, but after finding myself addicted to songs like “Slip Away (Dreamin’ Again)” and “Together” in the last month, I must admit that I’ve become quite a fan of their stately approach to melodicism.

Cascading power chords crash into each other and leave a trail of opulent harmonies in their wake inside of the 13 tracks listeners will discover after pressing play on Dizzy Box Nine’s Pop Fantasy. A follow-up to their successful studio debut Electric Illusion, Pop Fantasy capitalizes on the bristling power pop sound that the band experimentally channels through the lens of aggressive, unforgiving punk rock, grinding out methodical jams like “Rosie,” “Lost and Found,” “Like a Star,” “Anytime, Anyplace,” and “Yesterday” as if it were second nature. Dizzy Box Nine have built up quite a sterling reputation in their native California for executing their songcraft with a bulging physicality when performing live on stage, and this album accurately captures that physicality without having to employ a bunch of external frills or cheap studio techniques. This is Dizzy Box Nine at their most organic and authentic, and though the cocktail they serve up in Pop Fantasy is a stiff one to put it mildly, it’s exactly the kind of refreshing rock luster that was so sorely missed in 2018.