Pop Sickle Scores With Pop Hooks

Music preview

Pop Sickle, rock music, with Imij, at the Weathered Wall, 1921 Fifth Ave. tonight, 9 p.m. -------------------------------------------------------------------

Rob Skinner doesn't want to be 19 forever.

When Skinner was 19, he became part of Coffin Break, a punk rock trio with pop inflections. The band carved out a little piece of Seattle rock history, eventually recording with Epitaph Records, a prominent independent label based in Los Angeles. They've done 12 national tours and two European tours. They've done things a majority of current Seattle bands will never do.

But Skinner wants to start over, and, in a sense, grow up.

"My views are a lot different than when I was 19 or 20," Skinner said. "And at 26, I'm forced to sing things that I wrote back then, like `Just Say No To Religion' or `Kill The President.' There's a saying that you become a socialist at 18 and a conservative at 30. Although I'm not that far gone, I want to sing things that I could sing 10 years down the road with a straight face."

So, while Coffin Break takes a hiatus of indefinite length, Skinner has Pop Sickle.

Pop Sickle, who headlines a show at the Weathered Wall tonight, started as a side project last winter between Skinner, Alcohol Funny Car guitarist Ben London and Gits drummer Steve Moriarty. The three recorded material last November, mixed it in March and will release the material this November as "Under The Influences," an album on local label C/Z.

London and Moriarty will play tonight, but they'll only join Skinner for stealth Pop Sickle shows in the future. Alcohol Funny Car is about to release a C/Z album, and the Gits, who were derailed when singer Mia Zapata was murdered in July, are auditioning new singers and planning to release the album they were working on just before her death.

Local drummer Erik Soderstrom and guitarist Brian Naughbert, who plays in Tacoma's Good Gravy, will join Skinner in a permanent version of Pop Sickle. That trio has had two shows and three practices to date.

Although the "super group" status of the first Pop Sickle is part of its appeal, the transition to the new members won't be abrupt. Skinner sings all but two songs on the album and started breaking them in by giving them copies of "Under The Influences" and saying "learn this."

The album, for the most part, is concentrated power pop with bright, ringing vocals and a tight squall of melodic noise underneath.

Although Coffin Break shines brightest when it throws poppy vocal hooks in front of its punk rock, Skinner said that the Pop Sickle material is too pop-oriented for that band. "I started the group because I knew we wouldn't play these songs in Coffin Break. Playing songs this poppy would knock that punk credibility."