It's an odd sensation coming across a word that once felt fully integrated into the lexicon, but now you can't manage to recall the context for its use. It's like finding a grey hair in the morning after you swear you went to bed with a full head of luscious technicolor strands sprouting from your scalp- a sign of one's advancing age and growing irrelevance I suppose. It's even freakier when the word is only two or three years old! This is all to say that I can't recall the correct application of the term "Poggers" but I'm pretty sure 3xBlast's deployment is more or less within the margin of error (maybe they used it differently in the UK?). 2021's Babe, You Look Poggers Tonight! was a surprising contender in the fastly expanding field of chip-punk that the peak isolation of the pandemic sired. They're not as well recognized as say, Hey, Ily, but this isn't for a lack of effort or imagination- as far as I'm concerned 3xBlast does a better job of integrating their influences into a single vision and bringing it to life in full 32-bit fidelity then just about anyone in the game. The title track comes on like a dopamine spike, hitting all the right notes with the enthusiasm of a younger button-mashing sibling and the concentration and confidence of a seasoned arcade shark hustling a Donkey Kong cabinet- smashing powerchords like they were powerups and coasting on the crunch of plastic-cast, sound-card generated grooves in a pop-punk serenade and tribute to youthful trouble-making, and lots of it. The following track is almost a sequel, traveling with the same lightfooted fervor, only with a dreamer sense of reverential levity, primarily concentrated in the sun-up/sun-set, elliptical swing of the bridge. It honestly, doesn't seem like it could get more exciting until 3xBlast rolls up on you with a warm and bodacious sax wail courtesy of DonutShoes on "Now This Is A Waterpark!," and then all of a sudden, you feel like you're in a crowded room at a house party, keeping the beat with the band by the skipping pace of your collective pogo hops. It's difficult to place the vocals, but they're definitely fed through some kind of augmentation that deepens the band's commitment to their retro-electro aesthetic while elevating it with perky personality and whimsical harmonies, eliciting comparisons to the high-energy belt and feint of The Swellers in equal measure to spastic Devo-wave of Polysics. Babe, You look Poggers Tonight! is not a single-player campaign for quiet nights in; it's the summoning siren of a reality-warping DDR derby waiting to throw down in your parent's basement. Let the Capri Sun flow like tangy wine from Baccus's chalice, for tonight belongs to the youth, to the dungeon-crawling adventurers, the all-night revilers, and the motley JRPG fanatics... and anyone who still remembers what the hell poggers means without having to look it up in Urban Dictionary.
