Review: 'Back To California' by 20/20
GUEST POST: Jordan Oakes
With a first album whose reputation has grown to represent the gold standard for power pop, 20/20 has stood, for decades, in the shadow of their own brilliance.
Their second album, Look Out!, mostly supplanted worldly themes for the romantic sentiment that filled the grooves of their momentous, self-titled debut.
The underrated third record, Sex Trap, stripped down the production and arrangements to an almost Flamin’ Groovies-ish muscularity.
These new songs from the album Back To California (SpyderPop Records/Big Stir Records) have staying power, much like the band itself.
In the mode of The Records’ “The Same Mistakes,” the striking “Why Do I Hurt Myself?” finds vital life lessons in trial and error; in the hard-earned art of loving oneself—perhaps even finding its pop in a higher power.
The haunting “When the Sun Goes Down” is one of 20/20’s most beautiful creations. All the tracks on this relatively short excursion build on one another; sometimes it feels like a song cycle that doesn’t need handlebars.
The songs revisit SoCal inspirations like “Laurel Canyon”; revel in the fleeting sound of an Everly Brothers song blasting from somebody’s car radio into the summer smog; depict a regal sunset bidding the big city goodnight.
With their most personal and confessional set of lyrics since 1981’s Look Out!, Back to California—via songwriters Ron Flynt and Steve Allen—has reinvented 20/20 just enough for us to see how far they’ve come, and how far they can travel.
The things we love about them are still there: the harmonies, the amped-up Searchers jangle; the clever and poignant twists and turns of phrase; the melodic pop hooks that often hide in plain sight. But they’ve driven straight past the lyrical bluffs of romantic themes and post-schoolboy power pop fantasies.
I’ve heard this album referred to as Americana, but it’s about only one state—a state of no depression, of remembering things from a distance and appreciating the past. It’s both rocking and reckoning.
In short, 20/20 looks back at Los Angeles with great affection, but, more importantly, the hindsight and wisdom of knowing what they’ve left behind.
Jordan Oakes founded, published, and edited the Yellow Pills power pop magazine beginning in 1991, and compiled five Yellow Pills CD compilations beginning in 1993. His journalism has also appeared in Sound Choice, Speak, The Riverfront Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Rolling Stone’s ‘Alt-Rock-a-Rama’ book, and elsewhere. He’s a published poet and occasional standup comedian. He loves dogs and dog-eared magazines.