Formed in New York City by four North Carolinians, The dB’s, consisting of singer-guitarist-songwriters Chris Stamey and Peter Holsapple, bassist Gene Holder, and drummer Will Rigby, set a high standard for power pop in the 1980s. In so doing they helped to set the template for the decade’s college rock upsurge. Their excellent debut Stands for DeciBels sees reissue June 7 via Propeller Sound Recordings. Amazingly, this remastered edition is the first time the set has been released on vinyl in the United States.
That The dB’s couldn’t get a US record deal until Like This, their third LP, was released in 1984 by Bearsville, is considered by many to be a stumper. Scratching noggins, the question is posed: how could a band this catchy, energetic, and resistant to cliché be ignored in the land that nurtured them, and not once but twice, as their sophomore album Repercussion (also released in 1981 by Albion) was also an import only affair in the USA (notably, prior to the release of Like This, Chris Stamey had exited the dB’s).
It’s pretty clear in retrospect that by 1981 The dB’s were moving rapidly in a direction opposite from prevailing trends in their home country (and to a lesser extent, the UK and Europe). It’s been said that the 1960s didn’t definitively become the ’60s until The Beatles made their international splash (others have dated it to the emergence of The Beach Boys). The point where the ’70s are firmly established is hazier, but it did take a few years. In the ’80s, the change came hard and fast.
By 1981 punk had been firmly rejected in commercial terms. Disco had made its exit. New wave was slowly developing into synth pop. Hard rock sounded different. R&B sounded different. And the changes were coming so fast that throwback tendencies had sprung up, a few even commercially successful. But if intrinsically rooted in power pop (Stamey having played with Alex Chilton in NYC in 1977 and with Mitch Easter in The Sneakers), The dB’s were forward thinking rather than retro minded.
Opener “Black and White” is a windows down highway driving anthem, certainly a classique proposition when caught on the radio or popped into a tape deck, but the high velocity of the jangle retains ties to punk while predicting the arrival of Let’s Active (for just one ’80s example). “Dynamite” resonates a bit like The Soft Boys, which isn’t a surprise given that Stamey, Holsapple, and Rigby backed Soft Boy Kimberley Rew for three tracks on his 1982 mini-LP The Bible of Bop.
It not wrong to fit The dB’s into the grand post-punk scheme of things. Doing so helps in understanding the UK nature of their first two albums, as post-punk was very much an import section scenario in the USA (note that The Feelies’ Crazy Rhythms was released by Stiff in 1980 and Pere Ubu’s The Art of Walking was released by Rough Trade the same year).
“She’s Not Worried” is quite a ’60s pop-inclined affair and full of psychedelic angles (keyboards mimicking backward guitars, for instance), but “The Fight” swings back into power-pop, tough and smart. And where so much power-pop luxuriates in romantic optimism and naivete, Stamey and Holsapple are more focused on arguments, breakups and unhappiness, which frankly holds up better for experienced and jaded hearts.
It’s tracks like “Espionage,” with its needling keyboard and an aura that’s almost XTC-like, and the reggae tinged “Tearjerkin’” that reinforce the post-punk in The dB’s mix. Both songs would’ve easily fit onto the C81 tape compiled by the New Musical Express. Post-punk aspects persist in side two’s opener “Cycles per Second,” but then two straight Holsapple songs, “Bad Reputation” and “Big Brown Eyes,” lean into power pop.
Of the two songwriters, Holsapple is the most power pop reverent, though the catchiness in Stamey’s “I’m in Love” is pretty straight ahead. For the close of the vinyl, Holsapple’s “Moving in Your Sleep” exudes similarities to Roy Orbison, and that’s sweet.
By the time I.R.S. Records reissued Stands for DeciBels on CD Stateside in 1989 (with a bonus cut, the very Big Starry “Judy,” included on Propeller’s CD), college radio had peaked, disseminating music from Athens and Hoboken, the Paisley Underground, Scott Miller’s Game Theory and more. As much of the scene had caught up with the dB’s, their debut still sounded fresh. And so it is today.
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