*** King Radio

MR. K IS DEAD, GO HOME

(Tar Hut)

Not many folks really get the roots-rock/power-pop connection, but there's a generation of musicians out there who are old enough to have heard the Raspberries, the Stones, and the Band played back to back on the radio, and young enough to have jumbled them all together in their heads at the time. Bands who combine these influences and get it right, like Velvet Crush, are typically and unjustly rewarded with commercial failure, but that's not stopping Boston's Tar Hut label. Its fifth release, Mr. K Is Dead, Go Home, is by Northampton's King Radio, the brainchild of former Scud Mountain Boy Frank Padellaro (guitar/vocals).

Produced by sometime Lilys member and Pernice Brother Thom Monahan, the disc is built on the creative tension between Padellaro's McCartney-via-Monkees melodies and weepy slacker ballads and the storm-and-twang of bassist/vocalist Jim Smola, with whom Padellaro shares songwriting duties. Although the disc shoots off in enough directions to make your head spin (delicate orch-pop horn arrangements give way to garage-rock dirge), all of King Radio's tunes have one thing in common: solid songwriting delivered in three minutes or less.

-- Meredith Ochs