Cheater (studio album) by Pom Poko

From mdbaxter 09/22/2021 16:20

Unique sounding album that features a variety of quality sounding music. Great instrumentals and very well timed changes in tempo. Love the dichotomy of the hardcore experimental rock sound with the most fragile of vocals.

From Mercury 01/25/2021 23:04

85/100 (Earworm melodies and beautiful pop hooks mixed with gnarly, dirty, beautiful guitar breakdowns meets a dancy and playful attitude throughout. This album is a blast and I recommend it to people who like Noise Pop or kinda exuberant dance punkish stuff. Hard to describe but great nonetheless.)

Personally I couldn't resist the charms of this album. The vocals are underwhelming and maybe the weakest aspect of the music, but even they have their moments. The guitars are consistently gnarly, nasty, beautiful yet ugly. The drums parts and tempo changes are refreshing and brilliantly wacky and random. The songs are a nice mix of pop and noise rock and dance punk, and when the songs get heavy they get REALLY in your face heavy. When the songs are just bubblegum pop they are quite sweet and fragile. Sometimes these 2 elements slam together in the same song, such as on "Like A Lady". These songs that feature whiplash changes are my personal favorite of the album. But most of these songs find a pocket, a melody and a riff and just extrapolate nicely from that starting point. Makes for a fast 33 minute rush of excellent rock music.

I am not familiar with much stuff on the Noisey end of pop and punk, so this may be a tried and true sound that is not amazingly original. I wouldn't know. I do know that it had me smiling and rocking for its entirety, then it had me pushing play again and again for further listens. Its both accessible and gnarly, and its one of my fave albums in this young year.