THE POP GROUP
Y
Rhino
· On this reissue, The Pop Group still sound like almost anything but.
Contextualize them like this – five lads from Bristol, England, tired of Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government, that era’s latent racism and sexism and the anachronistic, "anarchist" punk scene around them, longing to create something entirely different. The Pop Group’s debut came out the same year as Gang Of Four’s Entertainment! and The Slits’s Cut, and its dubby soundscapes, beat-poet shouts and abstract, abrasive grooves must have sounded equally as alien, innovative and exciting as they do today.
There are so many strange and wonderful moments on Y, all spearheaded by that behemoth of a single and later post-punk compilation staple, "She is Beyond Good and Evil." The song starts off with a swirling guitar sound (strangely similar to "Foxy Lady"), before bursting into its skeletal, stabbing riffs, relatively straightforward funk rhythms and Mark Stewart’s agonized yelps, with cooler-than-cool lyrical couplets like "Our only defence is together as an army/ I’ll hold you like a gun."
On "Thief of Fire," the saxophones squeal like Ornette Coleman on a bad day, while "Snowgirl" continually threatens to break into a catchy piano-pop tune, but never quite does. Some of these songs sound unfinished and almost too difficult, but when they lock into a groove, like the unstoppable six-minute monster "We Are Time" or the backwards-looping instrumental "3:38," The Pop Group reveal themselves as one of the most astonishing acts of their time.
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