POWERSURGE

POSITIVITY; SOMETHING every aspiring rock 'n' roll star needs, in spades. When your record company and Joe Public and the Fourth Estate all conspire to let you know that your music isn't worth the chrome tape it's recorded on - and at some point they all will - you'd better have an outlook on life which leans dangerously towards the inanely optimistic or you might as well pack your spandex and hair extensions away before you even start.

Three years ago, the almost naive optimism with which Craig Walker views the world, particularly the rock music world and his place in it, would have been more understandable to most followers of the Power Of Dreams saga. They had just released Immigrants, Emigrants and Me, their classic debut and one of the definitive diaries of a screwed-up teenager. Craig Walker was spokesman for his generation (at least his generation, St. Benildus college, Kilmacud branch - half of my class knew every word of that album). The were being hailed as the blue-eyed saviours of indieish guitar rock, which in those pre-Nirvana days was a highly unhip and endangered genre.

But then, to the untrained eye at least, it would seem to have all fallen to pieces. 1992 saw the release of 2 Hell With Common-sense, a fine follow-up but perhaps not as immediate as the debut, which got them a few tepid reviews and modest sales and lost them their deal with Polydor. They signed a new deal straight away, with Lemon Records, so they would be around for a while yet, but the buzz which had surrounded their every move in the early days had faded to inaudibility. Or had it? No-one told them.

"I definitely think we could still be massive. I think the second album was really underrated. I don't think people gave it a chance - it's an album you really have to listen to, which is well and good if you're someone like U2, but if you're a small band people won't spend that much time getting into your record. But yeah, the belief is still there."

Of course, when you're that proud of your work, you have to blame its lack of success on someone or something - in this case, Polydor. "They're just not a very good label," he remarks, bluntly enough; "With major labels, you really are dealing with fucking idiots most of the time. Out of a company of maybe fifty people, you're lucky if you have three who are genuine music fans. They throw no ideas at you, just money." Which is fine if you want to party your socks off for a few years - and P.O.D. certainly did - but from a career point of view is disastrous.

Now, with Lemon, things are looking up again. Positivity, their new sort-of-album (it's actually a collection of two EPs and three new songs and a few live tracks, collected on an album because commercially, there's no point releasing singles in Europe or Japan, where P.O.D. have been a major act for a number of years now), is selling steadily.

As stopgaps go, it's excellent, especially the previously unreleased 'Song for Nobody' and '20th Century Blues', which reflect the two sides to Craig's songwriting, the personal and the political. He's tending more towards the latter these days:

"I always said I'd never get involved in politics, I don't think it and music mix well, but you can comment on stuff without being pompous, if you're writing about something that moves you. You have to look outside yourself if you want to keep the old creative thing going."

A fondness for social commentary won't harm them in the United States, their next frontier. They play the CMJ in early November and are talking to a number of major labels - "You have to sign to a major over there." Just don't call them "fucking idiots" to their face, eh Craig?

They should have signed just in time to get their real third album out - they start recording in January for release in March or April - by which time we will know if they can ever return to the awesome heights of '100 Ways to Kill a Love'. Craig thinks so; "I think Polydor were silly to let us go. We're still really young (he's 22, his brother Keith is 19), you know? We're still only getting to grips with songwriting. The new stuff is the best stuff we've ever done."

Which is, he acknowledges, something every band says about everything they record. But if the tradition of dropped bands releasing albums so great that they bring about mass self-flagellation in their former label's A&R department is to be continued, then it must be true. Polydor, prepare to kick yourselves, the Dream isn't over.

Power Of Dreams begin a short Irish tour this week. See News Page and Gig Guide for details.