Review Summary: The name of this band is
POM POKO!
The band you should listen to today is called Pom Poko. Their name is fun in a loud and endearingly obnoxious way, and so too is their music. Say that name! Don’t spit or splutter it ((
pompoko) iya), say it with your belly: 3-2-1-
Pommm Pokoh! That’s it! Gets better every time. Pom Poko play noise pop, which means that their sound is skronked out and amicably abrasive like Deerhoof or (I guess) Pixies, but at the same time it’s built around streamlined writing and kooky hooks a' la Superorganism or Kero Kero Bonito. Their songs are quirky and loud; their members are Norwegian. Indie kids everywhere can rejoice. Back in 2019, many of them did: the band’s debut
Birthday was quite the sleeper hit, a fun haymaker that attracted a modest following and had bangers for days (precisely 693 of them). Pom Poko now have a new album!
Pom Poko.
Said new album
Cheater is pretty great. It dishes out a familiar set of thrills, doubling down on many of
Birthday’s strengths. Vocalist Ragnhild Fangel finds herself in steady command of an arsenal of deadpan trick arts, dishing out frequent glimpses of pop glory. At points, she strikes gold with intricate phrasing and smart melodies, as in “Curly Romance”’s sing-song delight of a chorus and the title track’s instant-hit verses; other times she goes to town on good ol’ loud-and-proud mantras. Both “Look”, a volatile freakhouse, and “Andy Go To School”, a brilliant midway highlight, plug away with pointed acts of repetition as the band pillage the full dynamic wavelength for varying decibels of sparky shiny hell. Joy. At the same time, wildcard guitarist Martin Miguel Tonne takes a step closer to MVP status, dishing out
much more of the Jonny Greenwood-meets-Ichirou Agata heroics we got a whiff of back on, say “Crazy Energy Night”, while off-kilter grooves and crunchy bass tones flesh out the band’s ever confident palette. All things considered, it’s as though they charted
Birthday’s most eye-catching qualities and sought to amplify them into something more frenetic, compact, and, dare I say, immediately exciting. Up go the stakes (pom, pom, pom).
There is, of course, a catch.
Cheater very much feels like a shorter record than
Birthday, ambivalently so; this record is lean as they come, but it dishes out such an unrelenting wavelength of stir-crazy exuberance that its aftertaste is probably best described as
fraught. Hmm. This is not a unilateral criticism, but it’s hardly not a positive either; though the album is rarely outright manic, it’s constantly wound tight enough to inflict at least a little collateral strain from the springs of your armchair to the curl of your toes against your shoe soles. Don’t pretend you didn’t notice. Even the relatively ‘chill’ “Danger Baby” gives off tangible nervous energy, like something from Hop Along’s
Bark Your Head Off, Dog dosed up with crackling static; more audacious tracks switch gears with the abruptness and intensity of that kid who has, heavens be praised,
finally worked how to get the best out of their pogo stick (enter: Pog Pogo). Looking at you, “Like A Lady”. Someone, somewhere forgot to slap on a seatbelt warning.
It won’t do to dunk on these tracks; they and their kin are individually pretty fun, but they combine to keep an overzealous grip on
Cheater’s pacing. By the time things come to a close, the album feels more like an expired firework than a romp in wind-down. It’s worth looking back to the OGs here; whatever holes you might pick in their accessibility and lasting appeal, Deerhoof sure as hell know how to balance grit and tweeness alike with changes of pace that invite more than intermittent catchings of breath. Hell,
Birthday wasn’t afraid to stretch its legs, and highlights like “If U Want Me 2 Stay” and “Blue” were very much the better for it. It feels like the band confused maintaining a tighter focus with upping their songwriting game; as things stand, this album’s #crazy #kooky #energy inhibits both sides of their craft. Is there a way around this? Maybe the album is best one song at a time, or as a playlist inspiration, or on repeat forever so that you burn out instead of the tracklist. Whatever. There are only so many ways to make self-explanatory bangers bang harder, and any prospective good times comrades should hardly be deterred because the band have yet to peak, or have already peaked, or both.
Cheater is cool, and all.
Pom poko.
