MTN CTY JNK

Fisher Meehan must have wondered what would have happened if Jeff Lynne had set out to make early '90s Seattle sound like mid-'60s Liverpool. MTN CTY JNK, the big-indie-label debut from Fisher and crackerjack band DrugMoney, takes 1990s West Coast alt-rock and gooses it with heavy orchestral pop à la Lynne's Fab Four-fixated ELO. What results is a dizzy, deliciously messy amalgam that's positively bursting at its noisy seams with hooks. It's a big-rock-candy sound, with sugary gobs of studio confection slathered atop a bedrock of grunge-and-lightning six-string crunch. Power pop? Hardly. File this one under exploding pop.