Swan Dive Swan Dive 2000

I've always been a sucker for great pop. Bacharach, David and Warwick are the kind of pop I'm talking about. Dusty Springfield. Jackie DeShannon. This band, from Nashville, are rock author, songwriter and musician Bill DeMain and singer Molly Felder, and they recall all of those references and more.

The record is almost the same as the Japan-only Circle from 1998, with a few changes, including a fine Heart Of Glass, with Felder getting as much out of the song as Debbie Harry's original.

There's catchy beats, swinging rhythms, cool harmonies, excellent production and arrangements, Felder's outstanding singing, and DeMain's incredible songs, that are at once derivative and uniquely his own. They sound like the spirit of those fine pop acts of the sixties and early seventies have come back to life, but in something new and contemporary.

What more could you need? The ballads are soft and evocative. The rockers/swingers are too much fun, Circle and Moodswinging leading the pack. DeMain is both pop/rock historian and reconstructionist. Felder has a beautiful voice, and she can sing with it, feel with it.

It's a bright sunny day on a little silver disc, it's magic.