I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I lost track of singer and dirty pop purveyor Kitty after thoroughly enjoying her D.A.I.S.Y. rage EP back in 2013. I'm glad to see that she's doing well though. She is still making music, married to someone who supports her art, and has seemingly become an institution of Adult Swim compilations. She'd kind of living the dream... or as much as anyone can in the present nightmare of our waking reality. At the moment, I'm making the most of lost time by revisiting her back catalog of work from the past decade, and I'm delighted to have discovered that she has a (relatively) new project out. One with her husband Sam Ray, called The Pom-Poms.
The band's 2019 EP I Was On The News feels particularly well positioned within the present musical landscape. It's an EDM album that draws heavily from the ugly textures and forlorn melodic styles of the singing side Soundcloud-rap, and borrows liberally from the adventurous rhythmic sensibilities of pop acts like MIA, while anticipating some of the trends that have overtaken hyper-pop over the past two years.
The things the duo really nail about contemporary underground pop music is how delightfully crunchy and aggressive it is. For a lot of up and coming artists, there is no beat that is too blown out or electronic squeal that is two compressed- both are attributes which Pom-Poms have embraced with blithe delight, especially on the soundcard frying title track and the digital debris-strewn and splintering laser-lust-show of "300 Grams."
The duo is also positively resistant to genre presets, something that is highly prized amongst music lovers at the moment who delight in mystery and ambiguity. Pom-Poms masterfully tantalize the ears, like they were lined with bumpy little taste buds, with sugary outbursts of Indian rhythms and salty, cheer-squad cadenced raps ("Kinetic Energy"), while also overloading the listeners remaining senses with what sounds like rave romping remixes of a 100 Gecs ("Big Yellow Truck (VIP)").
All praise aside, and despite the general forward orientation of the music, it does feel like the bar for energy and obtuseness on the record is set a little low. It feels like Pom-Poms are thinking that they need to be topping the dance-rock of Sleigh Bells when they should be aiming for the effortless strangeness and collapse of '90s and '10s callbacks represented by someone like Charlie XCX. Even with this being the case, I Was On The News doesn't feel cheugy or like it's chasing trends- in fact it feels pretty on point and leaves me looking forward to hearing what wild places they take the project next.
