Here comes trouble. Perhaps the first hint of fallout from the Beastie Boys' bratty attitude and timely, surreal raps, Pop Will Eat Itself has recorded an album of conceptual stupidity, a signpost of disposable pop culture in the late Eighties. The self-proclaimed kings of grebo – a British style of unshaven hard rock predicated on the belief that Bad Company invented rock & roll – the Poppies brag about their obnoxiousness, stage mayhem at their concerts, steal or sample riffs from such disparate sources as Nat King Cole, the Righteous Brothers and Wham! and generally trounce the traditional values of pop music.
in "Hit the Hi-Tech Groove," their anthem to the possibilities of digital sampling. "I said you don't have to have ability/We take, we beg, we steal, we borrow/Here today and gone tomorrow." Throughout
Box Frenzy, the band members criticize contemporary culture, rejoicing in the vapidity they grew up with as children of the Seventies: "We've shit for brains, got blinkered vision/We steal our lines from television." Like the Beasties, the Poppies thicken their celebrations with defiant irony, embracing and magnifying the fast-food dynamic they were weaned on. The snickering boasts of "Beaver Patrol" portray rock sexism so convincingly (in truth, these guys probably wear
two condoms during sex) that the song was in effect banned on English radio.
Pop Will Eat Itself represents a collision between two exciting new musical strands – the burgeoning trend of sampling, responsible for M/A/R/R/S's smash "Pump Up the Volume," and the ascension of a young generation taught to worship unqualified success. Much of the band's music recycles Big Audio Dynamite or duplicates the Beasties, although the riffs and beats aren't as sharp. The Poppies may really be "here today and gone tomorrow"; Now for a Feast!, their earlier Rough Trade release, showed them to be a mediocre punk band. But the aesthetic they celebrate – Seventies rock processed through Eighties technology, oriented for the dance floor by way of the guitar – has just begun to steamroll. (RS 539)
ROB TANNENBAUM
