Jon Pousette-Dart, Anti Gravity
We all know what punk was rebelling against in the 1970s. In the Boston area, the syrupy soft-rock menace which punk proposed to wipe from the face of the earth was personified by the Pousette-Dart Band

I’m older now, and more forgiving, so when I learned that a Hartford-based musician I greatly respect, Jim Chapdelaine, was involved with the latest Pousette-Dart solo CD, I wondered if I could stomach the old guitar-noodling nemesis now, after a gap of some 30 years.

I somehow made it through the first song, the title song, but had to hurriedly push “stop” after just a few lanquid notes of “Me and the Rain.” I flipped ahead to “Who I Am,” since Chapdelaine was credited with playing bazouki and toy piano on it. It’s just as slow and quease-inducing as that “Rain” song, plus it’s a duet with a female vocalist who coos as self-consciously as Pousette-Dart does. For a record called “Anti Gravity,” it certainly does have a high opinion of itself, thinking we’d fall for these old pop ballady tropes.

Some will applaud the return of California-induced East Coast soft-rock. I feel it differently. Check with me in another 30 years.