The Pop Group - Citizen Zombie
Mark Stewart’s post-punk posse fight back.
THE TWO POP GROUP albums from 1979-80 were the toughest, maddest rock on earth at the time, cited by heavyweights like Nick Cave as an inspiration. Even attempting a third, 35 years on, takes some pluck. The excellent news is that hot indie producer Paul Epworth certainly hasn’t blunted their edge. The title track opens fearsomely, with all the ear-splitting industrial electro-crash of Stewart’s ’80s Maffia/Adrian Sherwood mind-melters, amid near-the-knuckle images of iPad-opiated masses brainwashed into impotence. However, at this temporal distance from the shock of their new, the post-millennial Pop Group are engaging, galvanizing, and far from unlistenable in its ongoing fusions of Afrobeat, funk and dub. At best, Mad Truth and SOPHIA revisit the Nile Rodgers-riffed disco of She Is Beyond Good And Evil to uplifting effect. Most gobsmacking of all, Echelon closes out with a tear-jerking piano/synth lament for broken dreams and haunted dancehalls. Avanti, indeed! Watch the video The Pop Group made with Asia Argento for Mad Truth
