My Top 1000 Songs #624: Author Unknown

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

After leaving alt.rockers Jellyfish in the mid-90s, guitar maestro Jason Falkner released a few terrific power pop solo albums. (He's continued to release music in the intervening decades, though intermittently, instead appearing more often as a session musician or touring guitarist for big names like Beck and St. Vincent.) I was struggling to include any one of a fistful of stand-out tracks, and ended up going with "Author Unknown," though it's really a toss-up with a few others.

The tune opened his 1999 sophomore LP Can You Still Feel? (confusingly, it did not appeal on his 1996 debut Presents Author Unknown). It's a jaunty little pop-rocker, earworm hooks and fizzy energy, but also some little studio flourishes that make it rise above more mundane power pop--the rotating jangly & crunchy guitar sounds, boomy shout-along choruses, the wiggy little keyboard line that shows up in a later verse, etc. Like a lot of his 90s work, it's both muscular and intricate, but unremittingly catchy.

Here's a slightly simplified version that was apparently intended as the title track on the debut before being pulled & reworked.