If, as post-modernism would have us believe, language creates social reality, then changing a band’s name is a sure-fire way to ditch a previous sound and create a new sonic construct. And so it must be with the band formerly known as The Morning Benders and now re-badged as Pop Etc.
In fact, Pop Etc is arguably the ideal band name – at the heart of Pop Etc is a basic pop sensibility that’d be at home in any club, venue, lounge room or even backyard party. You can hear it in the simple electronic tones and rudimentary drum beats of New Life or even the ’80s-bubble gum synth of Back To Your Heart. On Halfway To Heaven, the mood is soft and soulful, a couple of adolescents spinning around the room in a moment of romance that could go forever; Keep It For Your Own is slick dance-floor groove with a light psychedelic touch. Between Live It Up and Everything Is Gone exists the perfect West Coast saccharine soul of Hall and Oates, R.Y.B. reaches for the stars of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark without ever touching them, while the arresting atmosphere of Why’d You Do It Honey wafts over like a dance club smoke machine.
On I Wanna Be Your Man, hip-hop trades shadows with ’70s funk, C-O-M-M-U-N-I-C-A-T-E is so sweet it comes with a health warning for the susceptible of body and impure of mind and Yoyo is the track 1984 needed if only Georgio Moroder had the spare time. It’s all pop et cetera, and it’s all there for a good time if anyone wants to call.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: Back To Your Heart
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: HOWARD JONES, DEPECHE MODE AND HALL AND OATES
In A Word: Pop
