Cambridge based Power Pop trio Anushka Pop, are earning some well deserved buzz from their 2nd EP, Akathena. Give a minute, well, 2 minutes to be precise, and listen to the title track; you'll understand why. The boys (John Soares - lead vocal/guitar/ organ, Chris Welch - drums/vocals, and Johnny Arguedas- bass/vocals) were nice enough to sit down with Bostonist, and after one round of whiskey, spill all their trade secrets.

Akathena.mp3 | Why I'm Here.mp3
purchase | Myspace:Anuskapop

Both your band and EP carry unusual monikers. Googling them is no help at all; where do the names Anushka and Akathena come from?
Chris: All eyes on you (to John).
John: Yeah, Anushka Pop is an Irish swear frequently in the invasion of the Turks in 1903—No, I’m lying. See I always try to explain this but it never comes off right. Anushka Pop is the name of a tennis player that I went to college with and, the thing is, anytime we tell that to somebody, it's "Anushka who?" But no, her name is Anushka Pop.

So that’s her real last name?
John: Yeah, it was Popp but we dropped the 2^nd "p", so that we wouldn’t get sued.
Chris: It’s like Lynyrd Skynyrd.
John: Akathena’s just a fictitious name for a fictitious girl.
Liar.
John: It really is, the song was kind of a back handed tribute to a couple of different things, the song "Hey" by The Pixies off of Doolittle and "Velouria" as well. Every good pop band needs a song about a girl with a weird name.
Chris: Originally it was a song about aquafina water.
John: So I don’t know, it’s a song about every girl who works at Starbucks, or Kinkos.

Most EPs are 4-5 songs, but Akathena has 7. Do you just play faster?
John: If it were 4 or 5 songs, the EP would have just been 5 minutes long.

The Akathena EP is 19:48 minutes of non-stop hooks, harmonies and beats. But where's the power ballad?
Chris: We’re incapable of playing that slow.
Johnny: We have a tough time writing slow.
Chris: We have a tough time writing mid-tempo!
John: Peter Buck once said it was the easiest thing in the world to write a fast song, it's just tough to write slow songs.

Powerpop made its mark in the late 70's/early 80's. Do you think it is set for a comeback, or are you ok with riding the New Pornographer/AC Newman's coattails?
John: I think what we do is a lot more straight forward, really, than New Pornographers anf AC Newman. If anything we’re more along the lines—we would aspire to Big Star but I think we actually wind
up in The Knack. Power Pop is a headphone sport. (It could make a comeback by) As many lonely guys that could fit into a performance hall. The principal argument behind power pop is I don’t fit in, why don’t you like me?

That’s a lot of indie rock.
John: It’s sharp guitar chords & twists. It’s music by loners for loners, not loners but misfits.
But it’s catchy.
John: That’s the tragic irony.
Chris: It’s the duality.
John: New Pornographers are huge, though; as huge as Canada can be.
No, Arcade Fire is as huge as Canada can be!
John: Our idiom is fodder for the cast in High Fidelity, basically. Its guys in record stores arguing about, you know, which reissue album was better.

What's the most challenging aspect of the Boston music scene?
John: I would say dealing with Simon Cowell...
...who’s not in Boston.
John: I know, which makes it all the more daunting.
Chris: Getting people to show up for our shows.
Johnny: That’s definitely it, getting an audience.
Chris: We always seem to be playing (somewhere else) on the same night there’s a halfway decent show at the Paradise.
Johnny: It's not like college kids are going out to see tons of bands anymore; it seems like not as many people going out to see rock in general.
John: Arguing with the sound man, getting some more god damn vocals in the monitor.
Chris: Is that your #1 biggest struggle?
John: I think that is the biggest struggle for every band in Boston.
Chris: Uh, we love all the sound guys though...
Johnny: It's been a slow climb for us. We've lasted so long ‘cause we're kind of lazy.
John: Once we made a really hot album then we could come back and bitch about stuff. Like Amanda Palmer totally never returns my calls!

Anushka Pop are featured in WFNX's New England Product on Friday at Bill's Bar, with the Lincoln Conspiracy and Ad Frank & The Fast Easy Women.
9PM, 21+, $5

Post contributed by Lora.