Bombpop - The Day I Had to Explode

Name: Bombpop
Album: The Day I Had to Explode
Year: 1996
Style: Rock, Power Pop
Similar Bands: Replacements, REM, The Jam, Gin Blossoms
"One-Word" Review: Fun Tidy Rock
Based Out Of: Charlottesville, VA
Label: Snap!

Cover & Back

Liner Notes & CD

The Day I Had to Explode (1996)

1. Gun in the Apartment 1:53
2. World Around Me 2:32
3. ...ing 2:35
4. Don't You Know What to Say 2:49
5. Don't be Afraid 2:55
6. After the Fade 2:38
7. Anita Hill 2:01
8. Horrible Things 2:14
9. Mirror 3:09
10. Floormats 3:03
11. High 3:21
12. We're Just Different 5:00
13. Bob, Pt 2. - Not a Rebel Song 2:57 (Hidden Track)

Album Rating (1-10): 8.5

Members & Other Bands:

• Evan Bowers - Guitars, Vox, Bass, Producer (I Like Dinner)
• Maynard Sipe - Guitars, Vox, Bass, Producer (The Maynards, Operation: Love, Norman and the Plate of Shrimp)
• Tom Vest - Drums Vox (Norman and the Plate of Shrimp)
• Hank "the Kid" Wells - Bass
• Jim Ralston - Drums (Baaba Seth, Big Circle, Mark Roebuck)
• Wayne Gordon - Bass (Monkeywrench)
• Fred Hamilton - Guitar
• Marco Delmar - Vox, Engineer, Tracking, Mixing, Producer (Elektrics, Basshead, Light in the Garden, Ted Garber, Lynn Hollyfield, BYOB, Lisa Moscatiello, Steven Gellman, Morgan Rowe, Janine Wilson, Carey Colvin, David A Alberding, Rachel Cross, Eric Maring, Ben Dixon, Andrew McKnight, Oddbox, Jennifer Cutting, Soulpajamas, Arun, Drew Gibson, Margot MacDonald, These Days, Billy Coulter, Enid)
• Bob DeWald - Engineer
• Eddie Jentsch - Engineer

Unknown-ness: Never heard of this band, but i like the name. The artwork doesn't really give them away to any set style, and the pict of the band set up gives an indie-garage feel...so i'm going to guess this is power pop fed through a grunge lens, perhaps leaning toward pop-punk.

Album Review: They channel jangley college rock with a little faster pace, like a focused, power poppy REM. With two vocalists sharing duties, the songs vary between a Paul Weller Jam-like vocalist and a nasally slacker vocalist which leans toward alt-country and sounds like comedian Michael Showalter. Overall this is a really enjoyable element with some off key moments that drive, like the Cows, and other times sounding downright British like the Rifles (who were/are a very Jam-influenced band).

Not much out there about this surprisingly decent band, perhaps because there is a more popular band called The Bombpops. A decently updated afacebook page and on Spotify, they have a couple other albums out there & for sale on Bandcamp, with the last single made as recently as 2019. Here's the quote from their bandcamp page "After releasing the Anita Hill/What Can I Do 45, Bombpop's debut collected the songs from their live set into a rip-roaring set of guitar, bass and drums. Bittersweet, raging missives about their time and place in the world."

Stand Out Track: World Around Me

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