Pope Joan – Centurions/Volumes

Pope Joan

As Andy Murray performs his dour forehands in front of a drooping gaggle of withering middle class housewives I listen to Pope Joan’s latest single. At the same time ‘Volumes’ pumps from my stereo, it feels like I’m playing Super Tennis on the SNES because ‘Volumes’ is saturated in irritating 8-bit beats, it’s like someone has overdubbed the recording of an autistic chimpanzee going postal on a Fisher Price toy keyboard over erratic post-punk jerks.

‘Volumes’ is an audio malfunction. I actually had to check my speakers to see if they were not working properly, I actually wonder if maybe the MP3 I have been sent is diseased; I just cannot believe that such a lopsided mess of beeps would leave a studio in such a sorry state. The prominence of 8-bit synths dominates, pushing the vocals aside in favour of the band satisfying their nostalgic noise fetish.

Grating would be the right word to use, remember when that twonk from the Guillemots began incorporating a power drill into his music, maybe in his mind Handy Andy was bigger than Hendrix, who knows? But it was grating, and detrimental to the music. I welcome my ears being assaulted, give me Venomous Concept, give me Burzum, feed me with twenty four hours of Happy Hardcore, but never give me something that grates, I simply cannot stand horrid pseudo-electro indie that sounds faulty. You shouldn’t want to ring the Comet Helpline after the song finishes.

Pope Joan can’t quite strike the right balance; the glitches don’t fit like they do for Crystal Castles or Horse the Band. On the plus side ‘Centurions’ is far superior, and though I found myself getting a little irked about the synths that sound a bit like the parp made when Sonic the Hedgehog gets boshed and loses some of his rings, ‘Centurions’ salvages the single, you can actually make out the vocals, the ratchet rhythms are potent and the restless guitars spread with effects are totally wired.

I don’t want to make myself come across as some old curmudgeonly bastard, out of touch in his mid twenties (don’t fret I’m retiring from writing about music at 27) but chucking 8-bit sound effects over jerky rhythms doesn’t strike me as particularly interesting. Of course the plug in and play generation didn’t have to sit through half hour loading times, maybe Pope Joan are just bringing up repressed memories about crap computer games, stuff that I had previously buried deep into my subconscious.