“Bum bum bum bum-bum-bum bum bum / Bum bum-bum-bum bum bum,” sings 2nd Grade’s Peter Gill onomatopoetically on “Beat of the Drum,” the sixth track off the five-piece band’s new album, Easy Listening.

Philly’s 2nd Grade are students of classic power pop — the kind started in the ’70s with Raspberries, Big Star, and Cheap Trick — and make their own excellent version of it, as you can hear on their ...

Easy-listening music and its maestros never had to worry about screaming teenage fans or long stadium tours. Ridiculed in the 1960s and since as “elevator music,” the gentle genre was marketed then as ...