Paul Quinn once enjoyed a business-hours beatkeeping gig with daylight-beamin' Glaswegian melody-worshipers Teenage Fanclub. On his the Primary 5 debut, North Pole, he also aims to created dangerously infectious meadow-pop. Here Quinn, with help from multi-instrumentalist Ryan Currie, among others, lays on more blue-sky lovey-dove on the warm-not-Arctic North Pole. The Primary 5's sound, like the Fannies', is-- to keep it proper and indie-- Big Star, Sloan, the Raspberries. But more accurately, it's practically Gin Blossom-y (albeit through the Clientele's classicist gauze). And that's not just because brilliant opener "Comin' Home" mentions "gin" and "blossoms" before announcing, plaintively but seeping with driblets of molten joy, "I only want you here by my side."
OK, so maybe "honey you make me feel so good you're the girl I've waited for my whole life through you're the one" on finale "Field of Dreams" breaches my Green Bay-hat threshold. Banal lyrics bug me, no foolin'. Similarly, penultimate hymn "Shine On" is too Pure Prairie League for taste. But throughout the rest of North Pole, Quinn's songwriting is unpretentiously immaculate, rivaling ageless ingénue Jonathan Richman in the ability to confect near-perfect pop from deceptively facile-seeming bubblegum base and sporkfuls of sugar.
On "I'll Lay You Down", laden with woodsy CSNY harmonies, the refrain "I'll lay you down before you fall" may just be a (more?) poetic way to say "I'll never let your head hit the bed/ Without my hand behind it". But I'm ready to tell Quinn I'm free Friday night and open to going pillow-shopping. "Everybody Knows It Hurts" has the graceful maturity of Lou Barlow's Emoh, "Without You" has killer Byrdsian riffs and crushingly childlike adoration, and "What Am I Supposed to Do" converses like real-life flirting partners given the benefit of dizzying pop hook-smithing. On "Happy", Quinn exclaims (happily): "When the sun comes up it makes me happy/ When the sun goes down it makes me blue/ But when the stars shine bright and light up the night/ ...You know that makes me happy too." Straight-lined. More elegant than it looks.
