2010 was a year of extreme change for the band formerly known as The Morning Benders. They went from a quartet to a trio (following the departure of bassist Tim Or), relocated from San Francisco to Brooklyn, and all but ditched the beauty of their former sun-flecked, indie rock chrysalis, to emerge from their cocoon with a far more ‘accessible’ sound.
If you were expecting a return-to-form from the indie hopefuls that feels like a warm hug, be prepared for a rude awakening that could be likened to a crude hi-five.
Enter Pop Etc., with its open embrace of auto-tune, sugary hooks and distinctly fine-tuned RnB-lite moves; hell, even their cheeky artwork and moniker flits worryingly between an open cross-over into the mainstream or an elitist exercise in irony.
To give you an example of the sudden sonic shift, where 2010’s Big Echo was produced by Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor – Pop Etc. hands the keys to Lil’ Wayne’s soundman, Andrew Dawson.
That isn’t to say that Pop Etc. has thrown the tunes out in the rehaul. There’s no denying the inherent fun of “Back To Your Heart” and “Yoyo”, or the sticky melodies of “R.Y.B.” and “Why’d You Do It Honey” that manage to synthesize Chris Chu’s cherubic voice with pop-savvy swagger; almost effectively as the day-glo pick-up lines of “Live It Up” categorically don’t.
The problem is that it’s a statement that’s been done bigger and bolder, by better.
Two albums that immediately spring to mind are The Postal Service’s Give Up and the Vampire Weekend/Ra Ra Riot team-up of Discovery’s LP. Both albums that flaunted a keen grasp of playful pop nous and colourful invention, but most importantly, both were diversions.
If Pop Etc. is a new-found direction, it’s a narrow-pathed one. This kind of disposable electro-pop is fun for one record, but will it take yet another complete re-invention to sustain the group to album number three?
– Al Newstead
