Premiere: Wyatt Blair, ‘Cherry Rose’

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Wyatt Blair

Ever since he burst out of an Orange County garage in the early part of this decade, power-pop whiz Wyatt Blair has surrounded himself with the music of youthful glee. Diving in to his releases — either his own or the ones from the label he founded, Lolipop Records — has been like opening a fresh, slightly different-flavored bag of candy. Along with like-minded Burger Records, Blair and his label turned revivalism into religion.

Last year, he reached Peak Wyatt Blair, releasing two full-lengths, “Inspirational Strawberries” and “Smoke & Mirrors,” which saw the singer-songwriter and producer dipping into a seemingly bottomless well of pop hooks. The usual comparisons to ’60s and ’70s guitar-pop and the Britpop that followed applied, although both revealed subtle complexities that showed Blair wasn’t just going for Nuggets.

On the surface, Blair’s new single “Cherry Rose” sounds like more of the same — 2 1/2 minutes of gleaming glam, likable not just for its crisp production and hook but for its origins. It turns out the conceit of the song is that Blair imagined that he was assigned to write a jingle for a fake lip balm company. Marketers, take note.

For all its innocence, though. “Cherry Rose” serves as the introduction to a new EP with serious overtones. “For the First Time,” out Dec. 8 on Lolipop, finds Blair writing more directly about the mental health issues that have plagued him, including recent experiences with medication and, of course, what has worked best for him over the years. “Writing music is a compulsion for me — it’s my outlet,” Blair says. “Everyone has an outlet, some way of combating mental and physical conflict in their life. Music is my creative gym, honestly, it’s the way that I work through my neuroses. It’s a compulsion in the sense that I need to do this for my health.”

Blair says that “For the First Time” originally was conceived as another LP. “I think maybe I was trying too hard in the studio on my last couple of albums to add more instruments on a track, or cut things up more,” he explains. “With ‘For The First Time,’ I just wanted to write some straight pop-rock tunes.”

||| Stream: “Cherry Rose”