Who says the most melodically inclined band in the world can't be from coal country?

Comin' straight out of the Poconos, Scrantonian power-pop goof-offs Okay Paddy are, to my knowledge, absolutely the catchiest rock 'n' roll act on the planet at this very moment. Want proof? Well, after suffering through an uncharacteristically lousy Roustabout! bands one Wednesday night last spring, the four young lads of Okay Paddy stepped onto the stage and pounded out half an hour of their rich, creamy auditory frosting.

I'd never heard a note of the band before that night, but from then on, I was hooked. When I took home my freshly-purchased copy of their debut EP Hunk, stuck it on the 'Pod, and proceeded to jam on it during my all-too-early morning walk to class the next day, I found I could sing along to nearly every hook.

In the year or so hence, Okay Paddy and I have buddied up. I've seen them three more times. I've blabbed on about them to passing motorists and office furniture. I practically forced my lady friend to wait through four (reportedly terrible) openers by herself hundreds of miles away just so she could see what her dude was mumbling about, and almost come to blows with good friends who dared to speak ill of them. That, and listened to Hunk's six meager tracks about a million bajillion times. Some might say I'm their biggest fan, but I've gotta believe I'm not the only one freaking out about a band so immeasurably good situated in the Northeastern corner of this great state. Or, at least, I shouldn't be.

I used to say Okay Paddy sounded like Teenage Fanclub and Pavement, but I realize now I was just justifying my love for them to myself by comparing them to two of my other favorite bands. It's true, Okay Paddy does share Fanclub's gift for razor-edged melody and Pavement's house-of-cards lyricism, but their hooks are altogether hookier, their wordy junior-jumbles more apt to explode into Technicolor epiphanies. Much like Fanclub and Pavement, Okay Paddy may sound like other greats, but they themselves are just as good.

Both Hunk and the recently released full-length The Cactus Has a Point are over-saturated with sing-along hooks and serpentine guitar riffs. Pat Finnerty's straight-ahead pop sits effortlessly next to Mike Quinn's more oblique fare, like Lennon and McCartney thrice-removed. Quinn's "Fretboard" rolls and tumbles like a paintcan down a hill, and the easy-going twang of "Time for a Tailor" suits perfectly a song about, quite literally, a tailor. Personal favorite "The Waive" recounts a late-teenage relationship gone south with just the right blend of bitterness and good humor. Okay Paddy would be a great in Canada, Texas, the south of France. But they live two hours from here, and they make a stop in State College every couple of months. You owe it to yourself, to them and frankly, the larger aims of human culture to stop in next time they're here, and to seek out their records. They're that good; and, lucky us, they're awfully close.