The songs on Rock Eupora’s Pick at the Scab have the kind of structural integrity that makes for great power pop, but the album works because Mississippi-born bandleader Clayton Waller really knows how to put across his anxieties. Waller has a knack for creating music that is both heartfelt and bracingly formalist, and it’s this combination that marks Pick at the Scab as exemplary post-Beatles — and post-Shins — rock. “Intimacy” is the album’s most obviously power-pop moment, with the kind of jangly appeal that characterizes the genre. But it’s the melancholia of “I Will Never Be Happy” and “I Don’t Want to Feel Anything Anymore” that will cut you to the bone.
Best Power-Pop Album
Rock Eupora, Pick at the Scab
Rock Eupora at The East Room, 8/20/2022
