The Pop Group is unlike anything you have ever heard before. First, let me qualify that by
saying that I absolutely abhor that phrase, the most repugnant of all cliches of music criticism (if
any context in which it is used can even be called criticism, as the person employing said
phrase is not likely to be exercising any kind of critical thought at all and is probably just
resorting to knee-jerk hyperbolic short-hand out of either laziness, stupidity, or some
combination of the two). That is not to say that the music of the Pop Group consists of wholly
unheard-of-before elements, but it is to say that their unique assemblage of sound is so
particular and peculiar as to relentlessly defy an easy or difficult--pigeonhole. They were the
very antithesis of pop.
I first heard the Pop Group, coming late to the game, on a Rhino compilation, Scared to Dance, one of three "Postpunk Chronicles" (the other two being Left of the Dialfeaturing Mission of Burma, REM, Cocteau Twins and Wire--and Going Undergroundfeaturing the Go Betweens, the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Soft Boys, and Pere Ubu). I was drawn to the compilation by the more high profile bands like Echo and the Bunnymen, Magazine, OMD, Iggy Pop, and Killing Joke. However, like all truly great compilations, the best songs are the ones you would least expect. And when I hit track 10, the Pop Group's 'We Are Time" I was floored. I no longer cared what else was on the record. That one song. That was it.
It deceives you at first, the dubby bass, the heavily reverbed guitars, the tat-a-tat snare. You think maybe it's another bunch of pasty-white limeys aping reggae in their own awkward dub phase, like a less obtuse Public Image, Ltd. But when the vocals kick in, it's obvious this is a whole different kind of mess: spastic and paranoid, like a mad street prophet. Less than a minute into the track and the initial tight, open spaced structure has started to blur and collapse. Sound comes from every direction. Instruments enter and drop out of the mix without warning or reason. Guitars are layered and stripped away, distorted pick scrapes, muted scrubs, bottomless echoes. Even the foundation, the pulsing bass is pulled out from under you. The only constant is that mad, mad rant. And who the hell can even tell what his cryptic message might be? "Time is within you/shines through your eyes/black letter lies/your world is built on lies." Cried with such strength and such earnest that it cannot be but some secret truth which we have yet to realize. But when we do... it's curtains.
Six and a half minutes of pure ecstatic insanity. Spastic, unstructured, chaotic, agitated and bold. It cuts like a razor and it perfectly balanced. It is driven and driving. As free as jazz, as solid as dub, as tense as punk. It sounds like music burst open. The song was obviously constructed through edits, however, no matter how many times I have heard it, I cannot determine whether it is the most lucky of random cut-ups or the most perfect counterfeiting of anarchy. It begins as tightly structured as any song only to undue itself until its final structure becomes its lack thereof. Yet, it is always recognizable as the song it began as. Its boarders are not destroyed, but everything within them is scrambled into an unbearable turmoil.
Needless to say, I could not get enough of this song. I would play it over and over again. In fact, I still do. It is a perfect song. What do I mean by perfect song? How good, exactly, is this song? Listen: I paid nearly $25 for a Japanese import of the Pop Group's debut LP Y solely on the basis of this one song. I have never, as a rule, at any other time, bought a Japanese import, not for any band. That rule was broken that one time because I have never seen, before or since, in person, any version of this or any of their other releases available for sale (there is available through some of the larger on-line music merchants a Japanese import compilation, We Are All Prostitutes, that goes for $30+). Let me tell you, I do not regret that purchase, not for an instant. I need not further describe what you get on Y as the description of "We Are Time" suffices for a summation of the totality of the Pop Group's sound. (I don't know where else to stick this, so it goes here: every good idea on Primal Scream's Vanishing Point was stolen directly from the Pop Group.)
The Pop Group are outdone only by the Birthday Party for raw intensity. However, the Birthday Party, in their hellacious fury, lack the Pop Group's more textured anxiety. Where the Birthday Party was the disorder and aggression of punk amped up to a psychotic level, the Pop Group was the sound of true revolution. In this sense, out of all of the bands spawned by punk/postpunk and associated movements/genres, the Pop Group stands alone. Working with the narrow confines of the pop song, the Pop Group ripped it apart and reassembled it inside-out. An utter failure. An unqualified success.
