The Perfect Indie Pop Song

A few weeks ago, I saw Mark Robinson from Unrest/Air Miami/Flin Flon open for the Wedding Present at the Motorco Music Hall in Durham. Although the bill clearly stated that Robinson would be playing Unrest songs, imagining him doing those songs without the two other band members, Phil Krauth and Bridget Cross was challenging. Whatever images I could conjure didn’t match the actual show.

Robinson brought a lot of punch alone with his guitar, and was able to do the songs justice, but with a catch. He played only about a verse and the chorus of each song. He breezed through some truncated Air Miami tunes first, and by the time he addressed the audience, he had already fit in 11 songs. When he announced he was going to be playing 50 songs total, I wasn’t sure what to believe. At the pace he was going, it was possible, but it had to be a joke, right? Wrong. I wasn’t counting, but he was, in-between batches of songs that would make Bob Pollard sound long-winded.

After the show, I commended Robinson on his ability to figure out a way to make sure almost no one missed hearing their favorite song. “Exactly,” he enthused.

One of the songs I was most glad to hear was Air Miami’s “Airplane Rider,” a 7” single released shortly after Unrest broke up. The single, which could very well be the perfect indie pop song, showed the band’s promise.¹ Because they were unhappy with the first pressing of the single, the 7” had to be remastered and repressed, leaving the band without any music to take on their first nationwide tour. The final product, though, shows the instincts must have been correct, as it has a pristine jangle pop sound.

1. Alas, they only released one full-length album, Me. Me. Me., in 1995. ↩︎