Pop goes the summer!

Ivan rates the season's crop of Top 40 pop

mediated by CHRIS YURKIW

Who better than diehard synth-pop commissar Ivan Doroschuk to sift through this summer's electro-beat, heat-seeking hits? Right, so let's get the most obvious two out of the way first:

White Town "Your Woman" / Savage Garden "I Want You": "I'm sure that by now everybody's noticed that Savage Garden is to Roxette what White Town is to the Buggles, not that it really matters or that anybody really cares. But could we have exhausted all the possible sounds and melodies available to pop music so that there's nothing left to do but revamp, rename and recycle? As far as these two bands are concerned, I belong to that group of people who don't really care. But if platform shoes can come back, why not new wave? 2/10 (one point each)."

Ivan once told us that after "Safety Dance" broke big he got called a "disco faggot" in the Bifteck, so we threw this ubiquitous house/disco ditty at him:

Daft Punk "Da Funk": "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've got a feeling we'd all be going 'What Punk?' if these guys didn't have that wicked video with the dog guy in it. That's what you call a video! The music is kinda generic, D.I.Y. techno, but hey, that's what the folks are buying these days, so who am I to say there's no song? 6/10 for the dog guy."

Ivan has said that at a certain point he was told he was making music for 16-year-old girls, so he made the adolescent character of Jenny central to the album "Pop Goes The World." We up the ante, or down the age:

Hanson "MMM Bop": Sahara [Ivan's niece] is celebrating her seventh birthday this month and she just loooves Hanson. Her favourite Backstreet Boy is Nick, the cute blond with the beagle flaps, and I guess Hanson is like Nick times three. Anything that makes Sahara happy makes me happy, breaking down generational barriers and bringing us together. That's what good pop music is supposed to do, so I guess this is good pop music. But I only give it 7/10 because I still think it's pretty hokey."

And how about Montreal's new great white hop-pop hope?

Bran Van 3000 "Drinking In L.A.": "Bran Van 3000 are great, and not just because Sara Johnston is in the band, but also because of that madman E.P. Bergen (he taught me Cubase) and of course the mastermind James DiSalvio, who made the best video ever for Jean Leloup ("Johnny Go"). And I got to meet Lucie Laurier when I went with John Kastner to do his tracks, and her sister the contortionist who sings in a really cool Hawaiian band. All this and more rates BV3 a healthy 10/10."

Ivan performs Saturday, July 19 at Rock Sans Frontières with Holy Land & Fleshpaint