While power pop has not been a commercially viable subgenre for quite some time, Canada's
Rubber managed to craft an album that relies enough both on power pop and major label alternative rock (such as
Third Eye Blind and
matchbox twenty) so that it can work on major radio outlets. For the most part,
Rubber's debut album is a major label rarity for 2000; while the guitars are loud and crashing, the hooks are also every bit intact, and background harmonies and melodies abound. While, at only ten tracks, the breadth of the disc is a bit limited, it does include some excellent gems, such as the uptempo rocker "It's Gotta Be," the pure meltaway summer pop of "Sunshine" (the album's first single, and an almost sure-fire hit), and the guitar-heavy "Trip." Of the ten tracks, nine hit dead on -- and that's not bad odds, especially for a debut. The one track that doesn't work is the closer; a song entitled "Everybody Else" that isn't really true to their pop sound -- the band sounds to be trying too hard to force some angst into an otherwise sunny set. But if all major label alternative rock debuts of the late '90s were as consistent as this, we'd all be in heaven.