Zumpano - Disc of the day

Zumpano
Goin’ Through Changes

(Sub Pop, 1996)

Lost pearl of sophisto-pop from Sub Pop’s post-grunge wilderness years.

Reflecting July’s MOJO cover story, this week is Sub Pop week on MOJO, and every Disc Of The Day will be a release from the 20-year-old label.

Hailing from Vancouver via Sub Pop’s cute annexe, where the similarly ungrungey Velocity Girl also hung out, Zumpano overcame the encumbrance of being named after a bandleading drummer to be better than the Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation and Ginger Baker’s Airforce combined. Flighty, tactile, light of touch, with an interest in pianos, The Zombies and Burt Bacharach and boasting a hail-fellow-well-met sort of singer in Carl Newman, Goin’ Through Changes improved on their Look What The Rookie Did debut (best thing: a Jim Webb cover) to dally with peak-period Todd Rundgren harmony (witness The Only Reason Under The Sun) and weave a seriously delightful record. Their tragedy? Ben Folds Five had already annexed the sunny geek-pop Sudetenland and set up camp. Still, as with Jellyfish before them, the Zumpano diaspora disseminated the spores of sophisticated pop, as Newman proved his worth in New Pornographers and AC Newman guises and Zumpano branched out with the typically winsome and earnest Sparrow. Now he “fronts” a band called Attics & Cellars – a spicily imaginative line-up of two violins, cello and Jason’s piano. But you only have to take one look at Goin’ Through Changes’ inner sleeve shot (Zumpano ravished, fists lifted to the sky) to recognise a fellow soul, solid-sent by the ecstasies of pop.

Danny Eccleston

Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 10:24 AM GMT 01/07/2008