Kevin Bronson on December 18th, 2018

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The quartet Tsar was one of the darlings of the Silver Lake scene circa late 1990s and early 2000s, the best of the L.A. bands of that era who were resuscitating with childlike glee the sounds of 1970s power-pop and glam-rock. The cornerstones of the band’s catalog were the 2000 album “Tsar” (a decade later their calling card “Calling All Destroyers” got a second life in the film “Super”) and 2005’s “Band-Girls-Money.” Their songs had hooks that made you feel as if someone was dragging you by the ear across the room at (the club then known as) Spaceland, closer to the music.

Seven years since Tsar’s last-gasp EP, singer-guitarist and principal songwriter Jeff Whalen is carrying on. His solo album “10 More Super Rock Hits” will be out in February, and all the platitudes about music that’s irresistible as candy still apply. “Bubbleglam” is the term Whalen has coined. Indeed, the album, produced by Linus of Hollywood, sounds like a master class in what dozens of bands on the Burger Records label are going for. As Whalen says, “Pop music is always there for you. And there’s always more of it. Whenever you think, ‘Well, that’s it … that’s all the bands in that genre,’ there’s always more.”

So here’s “Jendy!,” the first single. “It’s inspired by this girl I like … but it’s also a bit about America,” Whalen says. “The song is really about how pop music and love make us feel a certain way when we need them to. We put a tremendous amount of pressure on them to mean something when we need them to mean something. And they never let us down.”

||| Watch: The video for “Jenny!”