There is a band in California making some music that I think you would enjoy hearing. They are called Maple Mars, and I would like to know how that name stuck to them. The people behind that name are as follows—Rick Hromadka on lead vocals, guitar, piano and keyboards. Steve Berns is the guitar slinger and adds his vocal noises. On drums, we have Ron Pak, who adds more vocals. And holding everything together on bass, we are entertained by Joe Giddings, and guess what, more vocals. I am always impressed when a band can sing together; think CSN&Y.

“Pop Muzik” is a 1979 song by M, a project by English musician Robin Scott. It gives me an earworm with the refrain, “Pop, pop music.” It apparently got trapped in a lot of people’s ear wax because it charted very well, reaching number one on Billboard’s Hot 100.

1979 was ages ago, and I think we are ready for another pop music earworm. I nominate Maple Mars‘s new album, Someone’s Got To Listen. Someone, that’s you, needs to hear Useless Information, the lead track. This song is the perfect foil for the “Words and tangled webs” in our age of information overload and dubious new sources. This song charges out of the starting gate. It ploughs a path through the dregs of the world wide web, touching on some of our favourite nemeses, scammers, aggressive advertising, pointless chatter, twisted truths and “too much useless information.”

A couple of tracks into this album of sunshine, we have the track Goodbye California. Rick Hromadka tells us that he wrote this song “about my love-hate relationship with the Golden State. Including the good, bad and the ugly. I also mention how I arrived here on the day of my 21st birthday, which is true.” This little ditty will get you humming along and wishing you were driving there yourself. I am immediately attracted to this tune because I drove into LA when I was 21. I left before it fell into the sea, but it is a good memory seared into my brain folds. I am enamoured with the orchestral quality that this song delivers.

I won’t go into detail on every song, they are all good, but I will close this blog with a tip of the hat to Silver Craft; the sci-fi nerd in me can’t let this one slip by without a comment.

Crooked Smile is a sentimental favourite of mine. I played a song called Rachel Delevoryas years ago that has a similar feel and tugs at our heartstrings for the people with crooked awkward smiles.

From start to finish, Someone’s Got To Listen is an excellent earworm generator. The future of modern pop music is in good hands, the hands of Maple Mars. Presented to us through our good friends at Big Stir Records.