Make It New

ROCK & POP
Widescreen, epic, ambitious: 2009’s best pop harks back to the glory days of New Pop, writes Ciarán Gaynor.

ABC’s Martin Fry

Listening to recent singles like La Roux’s surprise hit In For The Kill, or Empire Of The Sun’s Walking On A Dream, you could be forgiven for thinking that you had been transported in a time machine to 1982. Much of the best recent pop seems to take the early eighties’ “New Pop” explosion as its template; like the stars of yesteryear, 2009’s most hotly tipped acts are creating forward-looking, glamourous pop. It doesn’t feel like revivalism, it’s more that we’re witnessing the return of flair, wit and elan in pop. La Roux is androgynous and eye-catching in the same way that Annie Lennox was in her Eurythmics heyday. Bands like Hot Chip and Empire Of The Sun exhibit the same imaginative ambition that made ABC and Duran Duran so exciting. How did we end up in this musical climate? Just three years ago “landfill indie” dominated the Top 40. The Kooks, The View and The Frattelis exerted a stranglehold on the pop consciousness. Their grimly competent indie-rock seemed destined to ensure that pop would see out the decade in the most mirthless way imaginable. But then something came along to change all of that: a recession.

It’s amazing what a financial crisis can do for the state of the charts. Back in the early 90s when the slump following the 80s Thatcherite boom bit hard, youth sought solace and escape in rave, and found expression to their discontent in the sardonic, nihilistic gestures of grunge. Skip back to 1981, a year notable for a summer of riots throughout the UK, and once again you find youth were glamming up, New Romantic and disco and post-punk having crystallized into what NME writer Paul Morley dubbed “New Pop”. Heavily influenced by the DIY ethic of punk, but rejecting the notion of there being “no future”, New Pop acts like ABC, Human League and Culture Club made records that were the sonic equivalent of a big-budget movie from the golden age of Hollywood. The stars that helmed these bands seemed otherworldy. Classic New Pop was widescreen, epic, ambitious; notable for the luscious and luxuriant sound of the records many of which were recorded by ex-punks who had rekindled a childhood fondness for the glam of Bowie and Roxy Music. ABC’s Lexicon Of Love is the best known example of this, but you can also hear it in the exotica of The Associates’ Sulk, in the cinematic grandeur of the revitalised Roxy Music’s marvellous Avalon LP and in the beautifully poised, elegant pop of Simple Minds’ New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84). This sensibility is echoed today in Empire Of The Sun’s lovely Walking On A Dream single and on Bat For Lashes’ recent hit Daniel.

New Pop mk 1 was also wildly eclectic; Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside was steeped in lover’s rock and hip-hop by the time he embarked on an inititally failed quest for proper stardom with 1982’s Songs To Remember album. Three years later, Scritti finally hit it big, reaching a creative and commercial zenith on Cupid and Psyche ’85, a rare example of a British pop album directly influencing US r’n’b – you can hear its techy, digital sound on Janet Jackson’s Control. Now, over a quarter of a century after New Pop’s peak, acts like the much hyped Little Boots, The Ting Tings and Hot Chip sound indebted to the spirit of early 80s pop. Ladyhawke’s reverby, stadium-perfect pop songs call to mind Kim Wilde’s singles Chequered Love and Kids In America. When Kim Wilde was chosen for the cover of the NME in 1982, the readership wrote in to complain in vast numbers. One imagines that a Ladyhawke NME cover would be met with rather less consternation today. Difficult to imagine now, but even Dollar were heroes of futurist pop, their Trevor Horn produced singles – of which Mirror Mirror is perhaps the best – perfectly embody the New Pop spirit. They were beautifully glossy sounding things and determinedly poptastic. Today, Lady Gaga strikes a similar chord – her records sound like they were expensive to produce. She’s also every bit the fantastic New Pop character. As was the case with Phil Oakey and Boy George, it’s difficult to imagine bumping into someone like her at the supermarket. These people aren’t interested in dressing down.

Victoria Hesketh, also known as Little Boots

For all that this sort of pop revels in artifice, it would be nothing without great tunes and records that exude personality. So Empire Of The Sun don an array of outlandish costumes, and make glorious, yearning pop. Little Boots, whose new single New In Town bristles with confidence, and Lady Gaga are like a reaction to the chatty Kate Nash style of girl-next-door pop. Even the Ting Tings have an iconic look and the singles to match. All this scene needs now is a Lexicon Of Love or a Dare – an album so perfectly realised, genre-mashing and groundbreaking that it leaves the rest of pop in its shadow. What people often associate with 80s pop (synth stabs, electro-hanclaps, slap bass) is a sound which was perfected (if not invented) on those albums. Lady Gaga’s The Fame – with songtitles like Paparazzi, Beautiful Dirty Rich and Money Honey – frequently alludes to the language of affluent society, just as Lexicon of Love couched its lyrical musings on relationships in the language of Thatcherite economics. What the current bunch of New Popsters can’t quite emulate is the newness of the technology which made early 80s pop so extraordinarily fresh sounding. There are one or two exceptions: Little Boots is rarely to be seen without a Tenorion, a rather odd looking synth-sampler which looks absolutely nothing like any conventional musical instrument – it has more in common with an “Etch–A-Sketch” than it does a guitar. Nevertheless, it’s hard to see how anyone could be shocked by new technology in the way than audiences were at early Human League gigs, when the Sheffield band would appear on stage with just synths and a slide projectionist.

There are forerunners who made the current pop state possible; Xenomania’s casually ground-breaking work with Girls Aloud and Sugababes, all skyscraping choruses and a dozen musical styles mashed into the mix, helped set the standard. Alison Goldfrapp’s surreal pop nous paved the way for the current crop of electrogirls to step into, indeed Goldfrapp’s “Black Cherry” may be among the most quietly influential pop albums of the last decade. Annie had a part in creating the buzz that led to the hyping of La Roux and Little Boots at the start of the year. Her critically acclaimed synthpop has had bloggers gushing for almost five years, so let’s hope she sees some success off the back of it. Then there are many other acts snapping at the heels of those who are currently in the upper reahces of the charts. Marina and the Diamonds purvey pop of the most splendidly odd kind, their songs Obssessions and Mowgli’s Road deserve to be hits. Bat For Lashes’ witchy, spooky songs have just netted Natasha Khan a top 5 album, and current single Daniel is a match for anything that’s been in the Top 10 in recent weeks. VV Brown’s single Crying Blood was one of last year’s most fun records and if re-released will surely be a smash. No-one can fail to have noticed that this pop scene is absolutely dominated by girls. Girls with gadgets seem to be everywhere. Even Lily Allen’s current album, It’s Not Me It’s You, is noteworthy for its generous lashings of synth. It was co-written with Greg Kurstin of The Bird and The Bee – a man who also has a hand in Little Boots’ forthcoming album Hands. It seems the message is: you have to adapt to this new pop movement or die. It’s hard to see how Kate Nash or the Kaiser Chiefs can survive in the current pop marketplace without a radical overhaul of their sound and image. Everything about pop in 2009 seems to be arch and knowing, self-referential, focussed on delivering hits – pop and proud of it.

The Simple Things You See Are All Complicated

“By the early seventies, pop begins to enter what you could call its postmodern phase. By 1972, the year that Pete Fowler noted Marc Bolan’s failure as a generation icon, and the year in which Simon Frith researched ‘The Sociology Of Rock’, there was a clear division – commented on by both authors – between pop and rock. This division was conducted along gender lines (pop = girls and androgynes, or, as Frith recorded in his interview, ‘puffs’; rock = boys and real men) and revived the old polarities of working/middle-class, exploitation/expression, the mass/the elite.” – Jon Savage, The Faber Book of Pop, 1994.