Dirty Pop Fantasy
Valve
About 15 years ago, satirical news source The Onion warned we may be running out of past to recycle. With artists like Lana Del Rey and Mumford & Sons in the mainstream today, The Onion was right. What’s offered is oh-so-serious rehash, seemingly forgoing fun when exalting kitsch.
Regurgitator didn’t forget. This record is Ben Ely and Quan Yeomans’ wild laboratory of pop music that almost was, unconstrained by coked-up label execs or A&R fluffers.
What if Kraftwerk and Billy Idol made cyber love on a chaise lounge? The result is Made To Break. Ever wanted to combine Weezery indie and sensual Britpop to sell out the Manchester Hacienda? Go for your life on Mountains. If Def Leppard suffered a psychotic breakdown and locked themselves in a room to cry like The Replacements, you’d feel Home Alone Stoned. Bongzilla packs freewheeling stoner jams and piledriving riffs into four minutes or less.
Can’t Stop fulfils dreams of prancing in an All-American boy band, all fat R&B-tinged electro hooks and shoehorned-in hip hop breakdown. A squirrely ‘Fucking Up’ fuzzes up foot-stomping garage rock, reimagining the early 2000s revival of tousled-hair cool. They run the distortion at Marshall stack strength, before flicking it off to hold you close and whisper.
Dirty Pop Fantasy soaks up 40 years of pop from Austin to Zurich, wringing out familiar tunes strained of cliché.
TOM VALCANIS
