The difference between power pop, hard rock (of the seventies variety) and punk is slight at best. During the earliest years of the genre(s) one was almost indecipherable from the next. The Ramones are obviously the easiest touchstone, but so are Boston’s Real Kids and any other band with a guitar player exerting effort to render his chords in the most jangly manner.

Maybe jangly is the wrong word. Even Major Accident, in its music at least, had a bit of that never ending, but pleasant guitar style inherent in most of its songs. Whatever the case is, though, Chicago’s the Yolks have turned in a disc that takes all of that into consideration (minus that skinhead band), adds some proper singing and came up with a start-to-finish- solid rock effort.

Again, owing to more than one of those aforementioned (psuedo) musical genres doesn’t hurt and in fact serves to work the band’s song writing acumen in pretty well. Nothing strays to far, or at all, from basic song writing stuffs, but backed by an ample drummer, never dropping a beat and bolstered by a basser aware of grooves behind punk restrictions there’s a whole bunch of palatable work here.

Sometimes, music this simple is difficult to write about with comparisons working better, even if it gets a bit bothersome. “Sir Charles,” deviating from the rest of the disc, is an updated beach classic with a bit of keys tossed in for good measure.

The rest of the disc, though, kinda comes off like a good Strokes album. That will unquestionably be taken as a slight by at least some folks. But if that New York band embraced basic song craft instead of blatant douche baggery, the Yolks’ self titled album might have been the result.

Obscured behind production distance, Aaron Stringer’s vocals really do bare some similarities to Strokes’ front-man Julian Casablancas. No that band never really had anything to do with garage or sixties’ pop, but if it did, everyone figuring them for garage revivalists would make sense.

With the States worked up into another tripped out garage frenzy, the more staid sounds of the Yolks should do ear holes well. Whether or not Chicago births any almost stars of this latest go round of retreads remains to be seen. But the fact that I’d not stumbled over this album, released last year, until now doesn’t bode well.