The Death of Pop – Gardens

The Death of Pop are Bournemouth’s most famous bedroom jangle-gaze quintet consisting of Angus James (Guitar and Vocals ); Oliver James (Guitar and Vocals); Isaac James( Bass); Thom James (Drums) and George Abram ( Art) . Sofar they have released two albums and some ep’s/ singles. Recently they have released their new single “Gardens” on October the 23^rd, with “Only Now” as a (maybe even more) brilliant b-side.

The band was lucky enough to make it to the Spotify Fresh Finds list, which resulted in a massive increase of playback of “Gardens” on the popular streaming service.  Fresh Finds is a playlist “generated using a chunk of predictive big data technology” and a “distillation of the hippest users on Spotify”. So clearly The Death of Pop seem to be doing something right, and I can see why certain elements of their sound would appeal to the hipsters amongst us: the new psychedelic pop/rock is happening and popular under the population of neo hippies. Overall it is pretty clear that the psych-pop traits that were dominant on “Bubble Bath” are going to be here for the longer haul.

“Gardens” again is catchy masterpiece of jangle-gaze which is beginning to sound more and more effortless and sparkly and really trademark-like.  This upbeat piece is crafted cleverly and aided by West-Coast pop harmonies and their warm signature chords that give the sound a sunny, 60’s feel. Their live version of it still sounds a bit more shoegaze(y) than the recorded version.

“Only Now”, I have to admit, is now my favourite TDOP song. It instantly plunges us into a waterfall of sunshine  (pop) vocals and flows into a fusion of c86 and 60’s, then moves  in various unpredictable directions until it all freezes onto a bridge of suspended synths and unfathomable bass, only to kick back up again and finally drop us into a torrent of fuzz, distortion, and heavenly vocals. Amazing!

These guys are quite young and I have been following them for a while so  I wonder where they will go from here… but I secretly hope that they will explore this sound a bit further because they are certainly getting the hang of it. And that is an understatement!
Enjoy!