Airport Girl
Honey, I'm an Artist
Matinee Recordings/Fortuna Pop

Airport Girl's debut, Honey, I'm an Artist, is full of nods to fringe rockers past and present, from the unmistakably Jonathan Richman-tinged opening track, "This Could Be the Start of Something Small" all the way through the minimalist, twee-pop "Shine Like Stars." In between, we get punk rock, rough-and-tumble love songs, fuzzed-out power pop and even a surf-rock number. The whole thing's coated with a sugary Gen X slackerness that, for probably the first time in five years, doesn't seem silly or contrived.

Though it takes awhile to build momentum after the promising first two tracks, there's enough to keep things interesting until the band hits its stride on "Between Delta and Delaware" and "The Foolishness That We Create Through Love is the Closest We Come to Greatness."

The latter ranks right up there with The Boo Radleys' "I Will Always Ask You Where You've Been Even Though I Know the Answer" as the best song with the longest name. The nearly six-minute, hook-laden take-me-back love song has it all — handclaps, trebly guitar licks and crunchy distortion. It even has a nifty trumpet solo right in the middle that doesn't sound like anyone's showing off, which is harder to pull off than you think.

"Between Delta and Delaware" is more subtle. Whereas "The Foolishness..." is a straight-up, boy-meets-girl relationship-story thing, "D&D" is a tight, low-key succession of fragment-filled image poems like this:

Darkness of summer, sweet sugar molasses
Streams of the righteous cause seven car crashes
Someone holds memories of crying and laughter
Like certain thick kisses on the morning after

The band uses simple a-has and uh-huhs to tie the quirkily complex vignettes to the equally cryptic chorus.

Those two songs, the singles from the album, are a tough act to follow, but after the sub-par "You Fill Me Up (I Lose)," the band recovers and closes the album with the ripping surf rock of "Surf #7 Wave" and the minimalist "Shine Like Stars."

While Honey, I'm an Artist has a couple of rough spots (notably "You Fill Me Up" and the tepid, lame-lyricked "Love Runs Clean"), it gives power pop a much-needed shot in the arm it's not had since slickly produced artists like Better than Ezra and Matthew Sweet wiped out the work of bands like The Posies and Teenage Fanclub.

— Eric Wittmershaus (ericw at flakmag dot com)