By Kimberly Chun

"We just love magic," the Unicorns' Nicholas "Neil" Diamonds rambles. He should: right now Diamonds claims he's speaking from some imaginary abode called the Magic Kingdom Hotel in Orlando, Fla., and he's feeling queasy after a snack of imitation shrimp, made with crab. "We have a million dollars, so we thought, 'Let's go to Disney World.' So we've been getting pineapple cocktails sent up to our room every hour, and we don't leave the hotel room, except to go ride Ghost Mountain."

Someone's been to Fantasy Land. All I want to know is, do you believe in magic? Do you believe in a thing called love? Don't you know that you're toxic? 'Cause you got me looking so crazy, my baby. So lend me some sugar. I am your neighbor. And you are my candy girl, and you got me wanting you. Girl, you know it's true. Here we go again.

A good pop song is a ride you want to take again and again. You can break it down every which way – verse, chorus, bridge – but for us incorrigible romantics, a perfect pop song taps into something more intangible, even magical. Which suits us just fine because we can always use another slow jam, another hand to hold, another song on our mind, all the time. Long after the loving's gone, every music fan remembers the first hook that dug in and set up permanent housekeeping in his or her unconscious.

So you have to wonder how pop figures into the dozen-year-old Noise Pop San Francisco. It's easy to fling that word around – it's much harder to pin down. How do you resolve the crack-pop pleasures of Montreal's Unicorns, galloping to the West Coast for the first time, with the Floyd-coated aural dreamsicles of Earlimart? How do you reconcile the goth menace of Black Cat Music with the soaring dramatics of Denali, the jumped-up '80s bounce of the Stills with the '80s survivor sounds of Kristin Hersh's 50 Foot Wave (making their Bay Area debut), the Master and Commander-style shanty pop of the Decemberists and British Sea Power with the indie hip-hop of Alias and Grand Buffet and the rusticated variations of Jolie Holland and Neko Case and girlfriends?

More than 100 artists strong, and promising to be more "think locally" than ever before, Noise Pop's precision programming and all-embracing breadth just may have you choking on your pop lust. At best your mind will expand, at worst your head will explode, considering the fest's many events, films, panels, and shows.

All of which brings us back to the question What is this crazy little thing called pop? Here and now, buddy. Are we talking about the popular music all the popular kids are listening to? Or the hip figureheads all the cool hunters are checking into?

The Unicorns are no help. Mythical critters can be so uncooperative. "It's kind of like juice but carbonated," deadpans J'aime "Jamie" Tambour, steaming fresh out of a tanning booth and purportedly as orange as Florida citrus. He's been baking a bit too long.

Turns out the 'Corns are more interested in spying on towel-clad Lance Bass across the hall, chowing down on doughnuts, and getting free stuff by virtue of their extraspecial raw-boned yet punchy lo-fi music and matching band T-shirts. Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? (Alien8 Recordings) abounds with distortion (there's the noise); slap-happy melodies (here comes the pop); touches of rock opera, Afro-pop, and kiddies' blues; morbid tendencies ("I Don't Wanna Die," "Ready to Die"); and a feedbag full o' horribly and happily wrong electronic emissions.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition, is little help either. Flip to "pop" and you get "popular," "of or relating to popular music," and "of or relating to the popular culture disseminated through the mass media."

Naturally trad rock critics have little positive to say about the pop phenom. "Pop, of course, never dies because it's merely the top of the charts, whatever that may be," Joe Carducci wrote in his Rock and the Pop Narcotic.

And it doesn't help that fickle, mutable pop seems to have hitched its wagon to descriptors of all sorts. The encyclopedic All Music Guide counts the ways: synth-pop, alternative pop-rock, jangle-pop, punk-pop, Brill Building pop, Brit-pop, dance-pop, Euro-pop, folk-pop, power-pop. You name it – there's probably a pop hyphenate. I expect gangsta-pop and pub-pop to materialize any day now. And surely there's a kraut-pop craze fermenting in a beer garden somewhere?

Of course, some music writers, such as Simon Frith, have tried to map out and historicize pop permutations. In Sound Effects Frith pinpoints the early-'70s moment when rock and pop each took their separate paths: "Rock forms of production and consumption were perfected between 1967 and 1971, as an increasing number of bands and performers aimed their music at an album-buying market of hip, mostly male music freaks. This was the period in which Jethro Tull, ELP, Pink Floyd, Yes and the rest of the rock super-groups established their popularity.... It didn't meet the dancing needs of a working-class weekend; it sounded wrong on a cheap transistor radio; it offered few suitable idols for the teeny-bopper's bedroom wall. The resulting vacuum was filled in the 1971-73 revival of pop – the parallel success of T. Rex and Slade, the rise of manufactured teen stars like Sweet ... and teen idols like Donny Osmond.... It was bought by a mass market of dancing, chart-watching female pop fans."

Perhaps noise and pop follow gender lines in the same fashion. But can lo-fi melody mavens Irving and the everlasting Oranger ever be as popular as David Cassidy or Justin Timberlake? Forsaking the Unicorns, I flit over to the Wrens' Charles Bissell, who agrees with fans of the genre's '60s-era heyday and thinks melody is the key, regardless of production values, whipped cream, and other distractions.

"In a broader sense it means anything besides classical or jazz," the guitarist-vocalist offers. The Secaucus, N.J., band is pop "insofar as it's still working with the standard song forms. It's still about the song, not about solos, instrumental prowess, or ear-candy electronic sort of sounds. It goes back to a time when pop was driven by melody, though now so much on the radio is oriented around a dance beat."

The Wrens' songs won't ever be mistaken for "Crazy in Love," but their artful, infectious jingle-jangle harmonies vault over the music of Train or Travis. Their latest album, The Meadowlands (Absolutely Kosher), is even a pop classic of sorts, emo-sincere and unafraid to grasp at a kind of big-screen drama, and magical kingdoms away from the Unicorns' equally impressive chock-full-of-nuts craft.

Face it, pop is tough to peg because, like language, like a living art, it's constantly mutating. What was pop to a boomer audience is an oldie to a younger crew. Perhaps pop will eventually become more synonymous with indie pop than with Top 40 hits. In any case, Noise Pop co-poobah Jordan Kurland sees the fest as encompassing the best of all worlds: the genre-fication of indie pop – its historical consciousness and way with a hook, as demonstrated by lo-fi, sometimes esoteric songwriters like (smog) and Mountain Goats – as well as pop's mass appeal – embodied by past Noise Poppers like the White Stripes and the Donnas.

"What makes 'Hey Ya!' a good song rather than a Hüsker Dü or Pixies song?" Kurland ponders. "Pop music is defined as memorable and hook-laden, and so I guess in my world it's the difference between Postal Service and Yo La Tengo – one's more buried under feedback or how it's produced, and one's more on the surface." Some will get your hands in the air like you just don't care, others will have you headbanging, and still others will make you just nod sagely in agreement. And then there's the fizzy obvious stuff you can buy at the bar. For more festival and venue information, see "This Pop Rocks."

Feb. 25

Heed the call of the Unicorns but consider Bottom of the Hill and the glorious, sun-stroked pop of dios, led by mariachi star offspring Joel Morales and Kevin Morales and birthed in Hawthorne, land of obvious influence Brian Wilson. S.F. pure-pop savants the Monolith beckon too, as do the Elliot Smith-revering Elected, the lovely and crafty Versus spin-off +/-, and wannabe musical mayoral types Frank Jordan.

Denali, Velvet Teen, dios, and Heavenly States play 8:30 p.m., Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., S.F. $10. (415) 474-0365.

Elected, +/-, Frank Jordan, and Laguardia play 9 p.m., Parkside, 1600 17th St., S.F. $8. (415) 503-0393.

50 Foot Wave, Loquat, Monolith, and Knife and Fork play 8:15 p.m., Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, S.F. $10. (415) 861-5016.

Unicorns, Why?, Irving, and Restiform Bodies play 8:30 p.m., Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell, S.F. $12. (415) 885-0750.

Feb. 26

Make up your mind! High-low quirk-poppers the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players slide into Slim's, while Bay Area multimedia marvels I Am Spoonbender emerge from their Potrero Hill lair to open the doors of the Independent. S.F. avant rockers the Evening celebrate their new Lookout! album, Other Victorians, at 330 Ritch.

Evening play 10 p.m., 330 Ritch, S.F. $5-$8. (415) 522-9558.

I Am Spoonbender, Cex, Paradise Island, and Quails play 8 p.m., Independent, 628 Divisadero, S.F. $12. (415) 771-1420.

Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, Call and Response, Hospital, and Kung Fu USA play 8:30 p.m., Slim's, 333 11th St., S.F. $12. (415) 522-0333.

Feb. 27

Whither Noise Pop? U.K. combo Kaito are ready to get up in your avant-punk grill with plenty of great, girlie cacophony, whereas the trendy hot boys of the Stills get down to business on the other side of town. Don't avoid Cafe Du Nord when psych-out-siders Comets on Fire meet Matador acid rockers Dead Meadow and neo-folkster Six Organs of Admittance, despite the fact that goofy popsters Super Furry Animals and neo-folk rockers Papa M are making some noise elsewhere. Complicating matters, All Night Radio match their slow, dark, accomplished throwback rock against the rootsified song stylings of the Court and Spark at Thee Parkside.

British Sea Power, Kaito, and Citizens Here and Abroad play 9 p.m., Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., S.F. $10. (415) 474-0365.

Court and Spark, All Night Radio, and Hudson Bell play 9 p.m., Parkside, 1600 17th St., S.F. $8. (415) 503-0393.

Dead Meadow, Comets on Fire, and Six Organs of Admittance play 9:30 p.m., Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, S.F. $10. (415) 861-5016.

Stills, Stratford 4, On the Speakers, and Elephone play 9 p.m., Independent, 628 Divisadero, S.F. $12. (415) 771-1420.

Super Furry Animals, Papa M, and Rogue Wave play 9 p.m., Fillmore, 1805 Geary, S.F. $20. (415) 421-TIXS or (415) 346-6000.

Feb. 28

Ascend to pop heaven as the Wrens flutter in for an all-nighter at Bottom of the Hill and the Decemberists and Earlimart make it an ethereal evening at Great American Music Hall. The Coachwhips and Rock 'n' Roll Adventure Kids revive the Kilowatt, and olde-timey originals rule the roost at Cafe du Nord when Devendra Banhart and Coco Rosie enter warbling.

Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Vetiver, and Coco Rosie play 7:30 p.m., Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market, S.F. $10. (415) 431-7578.

Coachwhips, 400 Blows, Rock 'n' Roll Adventure Kids, and Holy Kiss play 9 p.m., Kilowatt, 3160 16th St., S.F. $8. (415) 861-2595.

Decemberists, Earlimart, Rum Diary, and Bother play 8:30 p.m., Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell, S.F. $12. (415) 885-0750.

Wrens, with 28th Day, Henry Miller Sextet, and Pidgeon, play 1 p.m. (with Dead Science, Low Flying Owls, and Communique, 9 p.m.), Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., S.F. $10. (415) 474-0365.

Feb. 29

Tussle with this one: catch the S.F. dub-punk dudes joining Asiaphile dance poppers Seksu Roba at Bottom of the Hill or catch up with the re-formed but not reformed Clarke Nova when they rock it up alongside the Cuts and the Everyothers at Kilowatt.

Cuts, Clarke Nova, Proles, and Everyothers play 7:30 p.m., Kilowatt, 3160 16th St., S.F. $7. (415) 861-2595.

Tussle, Seksu Roba, and Loose in the Wild play 2 p.m., Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., S.F. $7. (415) 474-0365.

K.C.