Pop music is apparently not a crime, according to the second track off the much-anticipated Freezepop major label debut. It will, however, eat itself, lest the legends be disproved. This Boston trio has been releasing their fan-boy electronic pop independently for eight-odd years now, with vocalist Liz Enthusiasm doing the Eiffel 65 digitalization over Sean Drinkwater and The Duke of Pannekoeken’s disco synth barrage. To paraphrase a Vice quote from the press release, Liz’s voice will make you feel as though someone has just shot you up with a lethal dose of pixelated dust gathered from a chocolate-covered Euro-trash armpit nugget, then fed you headfirst through the Mellodyne® plug-in wood chipper till all recognizable humanity was cheese-grated out.
Triviality is the order of the day. Liz’s lyrics steadily remain on the subjects of dancing and mainstream sexuality, as you would be able to guess from across a field. Sean and The Duke’s synth work is technically solid – inflating their gear list from a mere Yamaha QY70 keyboard and Mam vocoder to include a Microkorg, Alesis Andromeda, and a couple Nords, among others, for this album – but cheesy scenester lyrics and vocals so filtered and produced, sung condescendingly yet unconvincingly, land them squarely in a sterile trend hole. Though she’s just as much of a haughty wanker, Alison Goldfrapp transcends where Enthusiasm merely feigns. Freezepop and Goldfrapp make essentially quite similar music, yet Alison oozes nipple-tweaking sexuality right through any computer manifestation, while Liz appears to care more about justifying her choice of aesthetic and establishing her hipster credibility than actually expressing herself.
Now, you can take that with however many grains of salt you wish, ‘cause I personally despise 95% of all pop I’ve ever heard. It just seems to me that the best justification anyone can make for the existence of pop is to actually make undeniably kick-ass pop. That would be proof of itself, and would then forego the need to convince prospective listeners with mere words arguably defending your style. Everyone here needs to suck it up, grow some balls, and fucking use them, while Liz specifically needs to quit hiding her voice behind technology or just quit. How “Less Talk More Rokk” ended up in a video game called Guitar Hero is totally beyond me. They can’t even spell it properly, let alone actually rock. Baby steps, motherfuckers.
More about: Freezepop
