'Basking In The Sunshine Pop'

Exclusive Book Excerpt PLUS New Playlist & 99-Cent Book Deal

Volume 4 of our semi-annual print/ebook Remember The Lightning: A Guitar Pop Journal will be here in early October and it’s incredible.

⚡️💥 To celebrate, the Kindle eBook for Vol. 3—Big Star, Ramones, Weezer, The Apples In Stereo and more!—is only 99 cents for one week starting today at 8am PT…see what you’ve been missing on the cheap.

We’re also launching the official REMEMBER THE LIGHTNING: A GUITAR POP PLAYLIST and—for your instant reading pleasure—we’re sharing KEVIN ALEXANDER’S EXCELLENT ESSAY ABOUT SPANISH JANGLE POP ROCKERS THE YELLOW MELODIES from Volume 3. Keep scrolling…

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The Kindle eBook for Vol. 3 is only 99 CENTS 09/16 thru 09/23…

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Basking In The Sunshine Pop

The Yellow Melodies Deliver The Perfect Soundtrack To An Escape

Book Excerpt by Kevin Alexander of On Repeat Records

When I was six or seven, my parents and I drove from Oregon down the California coast to San Diego and in many ways, I've never left.

I’m still in love with the sun, the way it sets over swaying palms, and every possible stereotype SoCal can offer. I’m two time zones away today, but I still use those memories to escape.

Winters here in Wisconsin can best be described as the opposite of all of that. The leaves are gone, the birds have long ago hit the exits, and the waves are frozen. Living somewhere with lethal temperatures can be rough sledding; leaning into music as an escape becomes all the more critical.

So, I was fascinated when an album made by a band in Spain transported me to the West Coast of the U.S. this past winter. I wasn't looking for this record, but it found me at the perfect time and was exactly what I needed.

I had to find out more about the Yellow Melodies and what led to their latest album, Sunshine Pop.

In the ‘60s, the Beatles took the sounds they heard coming from across the ocean and started making music. They would inspire countless musicians from all around the world to pick up their guitars and do the same.

In America, folk and the California Sound were coming together and forming the foundation of the rock subgenre that became known as sunshine pop. With its catchy lyrics, lilting rhythms, and light arrangements, it is the sound of escape.

Later, in the part of the U.S. often dismissed as "flyover country,” bands such as Cheap Trick, Raspberries, and Dwight Twilley got busy plotting their escapes. Using hooks and harmonies and stuffing tracks with oohs and aahs, they gave rise to power pop and put places like Rockford, Illinois and Tulsa, Oklahoma on the map.

In 1986, NME Magazine issued a compilation cassette of guitar pop bands. Initially conceived as a weapon in the battle for market share among music weeklies, it was intended to be a showcase (and a promotional tool) for new bands and emerging trends; it quickly exploded into its own genre.

For many of us of a certain age, bands featured on the C86 comp—like Primal Scream, the Mighty Lemon Drops, and the Wedding Present—were our onramp to the world of indie pop, and our escape from the dull world of Top 40 radio in the mid-to-late ‘80s. Many of those bands toured the States, eventually making it to my town, where I’d find my way to their shows.

C86 bands, in turn, fueled the rise of subsequent subgenres like indie pop and jangle pop. Those loose terms describe sounds drawn from post punk, new wave, and noise pop. Despite that—and various attempts to define it—the hallmarks of C86 (and jangle pop) is a sound with the guitars out front, bright rhythms, and easy melodies. More importantly, those elements broke the boundaries of what previously defined guitar pop and remade them.

These are stories I’m fascinated by. My love for all three of these pop subgenres runs deep. So, it’s no surprise that the Yellow Melodies clicked with me.

Murcia, Spain enjoys more than 300 days of sun annually.

Its proximity to the Mediterranean means mild temps, and on the occasions it does manage to rain it’s not for long. It was in this sunny environment that the Yellow Melodies front man Rafa Skam first picked up a guitar.

Skam started with the Beatles, soaking up their influence and letting it spill into his songs. Like many of us, he would borrow records from friends, recording his favorites to tape. Once he was able to start attending festivals, he'd find new bands and buy their music. Those influences, too, found their way into his sound, and Skam got to work putting Murcia on the map in the mid-’90s.

Today, the Yellow Melodies front man is a busy guy. In addition to the band, he runs a label, does a radio show, writes a blog, does music reviews, is a live music photographer, helps organize pop festivals in Spain, and plays in several bands. It's a lot of hats to wear.

Skam’s love for power pop and indie pop also runs deep. Talking to him recently, he casually name-dropped several bands he still loves such as Belle and Sebastian, the Smiths, Teenage Fanclub, Television Personalities, the Pastels, BMX Bandits, Stereolab, Primal Scream, Ooberman, the Polyphonic Spree, Blondie, the Divine Comedy, Inspiral Carpets, Suede, Papercuts, and others.

Each left their mark on Skam and his band’s sound in turn.

The Yellow Melodies were formed in 1996 and were briefly called Rafa Skam, then simply Skam, and later Beatloss, before landing on their final name in the summer of '97.

With formalities out of the way, they quickly recorded a demo, played all over Spain, and had a couple of tracks land on compilation records. By early '98, they had signed to a label, released the Repertorio B LP, and saw several lineup changes.

It was a busy 18 months, but the band endured. They released several more records and went through many iterations before finally cementing the current lineup of Skam (vocals/guitars), Antonio Clares (bass/backing vocals), Carlos Abrisqueta (keyboards/guitars), and José Ángel (drums/percussion).

"We first crossed paths when (Skam) heard about our Television Personalities tribute series and offered to do a cover. Within a short period, he sent me not one or two covers, but five great Television Personalities covers. We were floored and couldn't choose just one, so we released all five on an EP,” said Wally Salem of The Beautiful Music, the indie label that released Sunshine Pop last year.

“A little while later, they asked if we liked the BMX Bandits as they were thinking of doing a cover of a BMX Bandits song, and we often included covers on our free compilations. A similar thing happened; they sent me six fabulous covers, so another EP was arranged."

If anything, Skam is good at keeping several plates in the air. The Yellow Melodies are alchemists, taking pieces of guitar pop and C86 and fusing them to craft something novel. Skam sees it as a modern take on sunshine pop or indie pop—but he prefers not to be boxed in by the "power pop" tag, noting: “I don't like only guitars; I also love the sound of synths, string arrangements, Mellotron, Farfisa organs, and so on...”

That love radiates throughout Sunshine Pop and helped a Midwestern pop fan like me fall in love with the album.

Anytime’s a good time for some jangle pop, but that's particularly the case this time of year as the days seem impossibly short, and the sky is always gray.

Even when the sun can be bothered to show up, it still hangs low and doesn't hang around for long. Shadows are in short supply, and there's a surplus of blandness.

It’s snowing sideways as I write this. Temperatures are in the -10F range, and if you’re brave enough to look up the wind chill, the screen just says, “Don't make any plans.”

Enter Sunshine Pop, a long player combining three EPs (Sunshine Pop vols. 1, 2, & 3) made during the pandemic. The Yellow Melodies are a group that knows their way around bright chords and sugary hooks. They're good at what they do, and what they do best is strip away anything unnecessary to deliver tasty tracks.

The record delivers song after song of sweetness and light straight from the C86 factory floor (it's not lost on me that one of the standout tracks is titled “C86 e Indiepop”). And not a second too soon, either, since every track feels like it's tailor-made to chase the blues away. On Sunshine Pop, Skam has crafted a world where it's all sun all the time.

There are no clouds, visibility is clear-and-a-million, and wind chill only happens in faraway places.

The lyrics alternate between English and Spanish, but the language here is universal and achieves its intended effect:

Days of sun
Days of joy 
No more lonely boring nights 
Summer’s here, winter’s gone

The Yellow Melodies are not alone. Groups like Melenas are also making their mark in the Spanish pop world. To hear Skam tell it, these are only two examples of the exploding scene these days.

"There are plenty of bands right now, and some of them are really interesting. I love the fuzz pop or the twee pop ones, the indie side of guitar bands. There are a lot of music festivals and gigs, and thanks to the internet, we can discover a lot of new bands,” he said.

Besides Melenas, Skam name checks several, including, Puzzles y Dragones, Mujeres, El Buen Hijo, Linda Guilala, Los Planetas, Ramírez Exposure, Sierra, Maronda, Ross, Los Punsetes, Los Bonsáis, Axolotes Mexicanos, Carolina Durante, Los Fresones Rebeldes, Aiko El Grupo, Lisasin‐ son, Malamute, Bigott, Las Infrarrojas, Lost Tapes, Doble Pletina, La Casa Azul, Evripidis and His Tragedies, Star Trip, Triángulo de Amor Bizarro, the Happy Losers, Kokoshca, Unidad y Armonía, Eterna Joventut, ExNovios, Ghost Transmission, Chaqueta de Chándal, Florent Y Yo, Morreo, Wild Honey, Celica XX, Río Arga, and Nuevos Hobbies.

Barcelona and Madrid wield an outsized influence and cast a long shadow on the country. I wanted to know more about the rest of the country and what the guitar pop scene may or may not look like in other places. The Yellow Melodies are from the southeastern part of the country (Melenas hail from Pamplona), and Skam happily rattled off even more bands from his hometown, including Higinio, Pájara Rey, Octubre, Pedriñanes 77, Bigote Chino, Ross, and Los Rotundos.

The only time Skam hesitated was when asked to describe the band's sound on Sunshine Pop, telling me, “I'd prefer people describe what it inspires [in] them.”

"I think it's simply pop, mainly sunshine pop, as our latest album's title suggests, which is an indie pop sound based on vocal harmonies and colorful arrangements, with sunny melodies touched by a positive vibe."

In other words, the perfect soundtrack to an escape.

Kevin Alexander is an independent music journalist in Wisconsin. He writes the On Repeat Records newsletter and is the editor-in-chief of The Riff magazine.

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The Official RTL Guitar Pop Journal Playlist

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