“It had everything that I thought rock and roll should have. It was violent, paranoid music for a violent, paranoid time.” – Nick Cave on The Pop Group
Cough, the sophomore (and sadly, last) album by the DC outfit Black Eyes, was one of those albums that made all other music seem dopey — and while the effect is always temporary, in this case the feeling lasted for weeks. It was 2004 and dance-punk was riding a wave of popularity that was just reaching its crest. The Rapture’s “House of Jealous Lovers” was played at every party, often signaling the point where things got real. Though, despite how good that song is — and it is fantastic — Cough just made it seem thin and gaudy, like so much paper streamer.
It’s not even like the Rapture and co. and Black Eyes were shooting for the same target. The former were interested in packing dance floors while the latter was more on an art-damaged vision quest. Though here’s the thing: Black Eyes could focus on outré experimentation but still create high-energy, funky tracks that felt just as immediate and fun as anything on DFA. It made it seem, if only for a second, like everyone else was reaching for low-hanging fruit. I imagine this is what it was like to hear The Pop Group in 1979.
The group was headed up by Mark Stewart and Gareth Sager, both young students from the southern city of Bristol. Prodded by the same frustrations that stoked the fires of many of the era’s three-chord punk bands, The Pop Group had the same energy and anger as any of its colleagues. Though the group’s debut, a dub-infused, angular monster called Y, has a level of musical inventiveness and general chutzpah that makes it one of early post-punk’s finest moments.
You can hear it right from the first track. “She is Beyond Good an Evil” is built on liquid bass and a jagged guitar that stutters and explodes over and over. Each would be be engaging on their own, but their combination, along with Stewart’s atavistic howl, creates a song that keeps hinting at disco but intentionally holds such accessibility at a distance. The same goes for the following track “Thief of Fire” — there are moments where you can hear a glimmer of straight-forward angular post-punk, but instead of vamping on it, the band has the track melt into a free-jazz sax slog.
Elsewhere, the album delves more into the tropes of no-wave. Rather than delivering melodic aggression like fellow Bristol punk acts The Cortinas and The Agents, the band opts for long abstract dirges filled with aimless dissonance and skronk horns with tracks like “Don’t Call Me Pain.” The longest track, “We Are Time,” has more in common with the layered guitar work of Glenn Branca than anyone else.
What’s impressive about all of this isn’t so much The Pop Group’s decision to slouch toward deconstruction over delivering an overt message. Y isn’t just an album of angry anthems designed as red meat for the young and disaffected — though, through all the willful sonic antagonism it still works like one. And that’s what’s impressive.
