Peter Baldrachi - Solid Ground

A superb set of guitar-driven pop, straight up rock Œn� roll, and mid-tempo numbers that highlight Baldrachi�s classic pop songwriting style mixing bits 'n pieces of Matthew Sweet, late-era Replacements, "Goat Heads Soup"-era Stones sounding guitars anad on the more obscure side bits of The Beatifics and The Gladhands. There's plenty of sticky guitar sounds as the ear-possessing charms abound on each track here. Baldrachi's voice gives the material an earthy, honest feel.

"Solid Ground, from Boston's Peter Baldrachi, grabs you right from the get-go with the staccato guitar riff and pure power pop chorus of the title track, and doesn't let you go until it's over. "A Better Place" and "Breakdown" follow with more of the same, and you'll probably already have given your credit card info to CD Baby by the time the 2-minute sample ends. But if you haven't, the midtempo "You're Gonna Miss Me Someday" probably will get you to do so. Other standouts include "Wait In Vain" (which reminds me of the great Aussie band The Chevelles), the Smithereensesque "Round and Round", "Start It Up Again" (I'm hearing some Eugene Edwards there), "Making Sense of Nothing" (which borrows the melody from Paul Westerberg's "Silent Film Star"), the jangly "(Are You Sure) That We Belong" and "What Do You Want From Me?", which has a Teenage Fanclub feel to it. Wait - I just listed every track on the disc. Gee, I guess they're all standouts. his is really a quintessential power pop album; if you were to look up "power pop" in the dictionary, there ought to be a picture of this disc staring you back in the face."-AbsolutePowerPopBlog. We agree....very much a total standout!

Breakdown - mp3

(Are You Sure That) We Belong - mp3

Round And Round - mp3

Wait In Vain - mp3

Solid Ground - mp3