After (and, some would argue, during) its 1978-81 heyday, Kansas City's Titan Records wasn't heard of much outside record-collector guides, but this sterling compilation makes a case for local music fans to stop and listen to some of the best guitar pop that will come out of the Midwest this year — even if some of it is 30 years too late. The songs on Titan: It's All Pop! may not all be winners, but even the few duds on the disc (like Bobby Sky's "The Water") are more than made up for by the album's standout tracks. Like many of the cuts, "Just Another Pop Song" by J.P. McClain & the Intruders is so infectious, it should carry a warning from your HMO. Fingerprints of power pop's mid-'60s influences and '70s torchbearers abound in the songs, whether it's the opening riff to the Boys' "Please Change Your Mind," which is lifted straight from the Pete Townshend playbook, or the chiming Roger McGuinn guitars of Gary Charlson's "Real Life Saver." Power pop may be a kitsch genre now; for the bands contained in Titan: It's All Pop!, it was anything but a novelty — it was an indisputable fact that pop music could be this good, this sweet and this tough all at once.
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