(Power Pop, Indie Rock, Pop-Punk) Upset - She's Gone - 2013, MP3, 320 kbps

Though Passion has long been a home to all kinds of music, we have a special place in our hearts for girl-group indie rock, pop drenched in reverb. Anything that sounds like Brian Eno and Phil Spector had a particularly sensual encounter, we’re with it. So of course at least one of us is going to pounce on ‘She’s Gone,” the title track from Upset’s debut album coming out this fall. The band is a project of Ali Koehler, formerly of the Vivian Girls and Best Coast as well as Hole’s Patty Schemel and the bassist Jenn Prince. The song sounds like nothing so much as Dookie-era Green Day, bratty and sincere in turns with kiss-off lyrics to an unbearable narcissist. There’s been a lot of hay made out of Koehler’s exit from Best Coast (she was fired), but even if Upset came together looking like something of a rebound band, their music is polished and penny-bright. If you loved the sound of that first Best Coast album, but hated hearing lazy and crazy rhymed over and over and over again (or, more realistically, having to endure the repetitive whinging of a lady who just sat by the phone all day), you should check for She’s Gone.

Ali Koehler (guitar/vocals),
Jennifer Prince (lead guitar/vocals),
Patty Schemel (drums).