Every day, some music lover throws up his hands and says to hell with this. To hell with progress, to hell with arty crap, and to hell with keeping up with pop culture. It's all worthless. I don't need any sonic landscapes or any folk explorations of our nation's musical roots. Lose the hypercapitalist stupidity of commercial rap, and the hyperaware elitism of college rap. I don't need ever-complexifying beats or flashy musical proficiency. Who cares about tired punk recyclers and horrible genre-blenders like metal-rap and country-pop? Forget ambient sound structures that require intense listening to even register as a song. Nuts to jazzy post-rock instrumentals (and isn't that the worst name for a music craze ever? What if rock and roll had been called "post-jazz?" Wouldn't that suck?) Ditch the latest equations of math-rock, and toss the disappointing back catalogs of essential artists. All I want is a band that can play some fun, clever songs with some passion and a sense of what it takes to entertain.

A long way to go to say Carlos is a power-pop band? Maybe, but most power-pop eludes our music lover. Yet, that frustration, that need for unpretentious novelty is an important force to consider. It can pump precious gems to the surface of a musical quagmire. Frustrated searchers have, over the years, supported acts such as Big Star, Cheap Trick and Weezer. Will Carlos ever shine so bright? Will their efforts, plugging away in the Bay Area of San Francisco since 1992, ever pay off in a large-ish cult following? They've worked with members of Bongwater and Drive Like Jehu, they've opened for Pavement, and now they've got Richard Mather Marshall, formerly of Alice Donut, on guitar, so they've got some name power. The power that matters, however, is the power to blast the cynicism of jaded music listeners. On Devil's Slide, their fourth album, Carlos brings that power to their pop.

The album opens with a hard riff. "Look around, nothing's gonna change," singer and main songwriter Rich Scramaglia warns. The song is "Heavy Metal Monday," and the lyrics give new meaning to the rallying cry, "Bang your head." The masturbatory subtext is brought to greater light, but so is an oppressed working-class blues. That's what makes Carlos' guitars sting, and what brings them closer to Cheap Trick in their pop harmonies than to, say, Fountains of Wayne.

The next song, "Always on My Side," is a little too perky, and could be at home in some teensploitation flick. But the guys get back on track with "True Blues." Again with the blues! Guitars slice through the words and each other surgically, then lock into a rumbling chorus. In "Quit Your Job," power chords (again with the power!) and baroque trills wrap around a message of escapism reminiscent of Weezer's "Holiday," even though the call for finding "a better day," coupled with Scramaglia's faint English affectation, comes dangerously close to Oasis. The accent, more a Beatlemaniac side affect than a Robert Pollard anglomania, could still put some off. Still, Scramaglia tempers it with a warm, friendly roughness that reminds me of early Paul Westerberg.

Speaking of Oasis, they didn't always totally suck, and one of the tunes they pulled off was called "Rock n' Roll Star." "Rock and roll star" is a difficult thing to say in a song, weighted as it is with self-consciousness. It's kind of like singing, "Yeah." Yet, Carlos sing about a rock and roll star, and they pull it off like... yeah. Their star is "Papa Star," a father drumming in a garage band, in keeping with Carlos' gritty persona. Elephant guitars sound as Scramaglia spits out lyrics that sound like a juggler somersaulting down a flight of stairs. "He'd be bashing, smashing, cymbal crashing/ Trashing on the humdrums/ Mashing the gloomy day away/ And we'd be dancing, singing/ And our ears would be ringing/ I was the king of the chorus/ When I'd start singing." It's good fun.

Some songs don't work as well, particularly the ballads "Maggie Lies" and "Dizzy." "Maggie Lies" is a good example of why you should avoid "doot-doo's," especially if you're a gruff-voiced, meat-and-potatoes kind of vocalist. It can kill an otherwise good song. "Dizzy" makes me wonder if one day Carlos, who remind me so of Cheap Trick, will rocket up the charts with a latter-day version of "The Flame."

Most songs are rockers that rock, though. One of my favorites is "Ali the Clown." A gurgling wa-wa clears its throat in an uptempo tribute to Muhammad Ali, the man with "two cups of love and a golden glove." They like Ali not so much for his boxing or his politics, but for his entertainment value-- the way he can "do the shuffle that makes me laugh."

Of course, there's much more to Ali than an entertaining shuffle. Carlos don't care. They've picked the one aspect they like and built a fitting tribute. Likewise, rock and roll is an old battered boxer with far more to it than just power and pop. I don't care. Carlos have one hell of a shuffle, and it makes me laugh.

-Dan Kilian