Review by: Dominic Linde
Album assigned by: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Pop Tatari starts off with a track called “Noise Ramones”, which sounds nothing like the Ramones. The thing with Boredoms is comparisons don’t work with them. They don’t sound like anybody. However, like the Ramones in 1976, Boredoms is a revolution. Only they have been for decades, and nobody seems to have noticed.
Trying to make sense of this album is a fruitless endeavor, as it jumps from bouts of noise to explosions of sound to bursts of audio. Yelping gives way to extremely distorted guitars which are proceeded by multi-layered percussion. Boredoms has a penchant for the arbitrary, and listening to this album brings to mind experimental excursions such as Faust’s The Faust Tapes and Frank Zappa’s Lumpy Gravy. Compositions are fragmented (and are likely not usually compositions but more probably jams) and stop abruptly. New ideas seemingly come from nowhere. Once you start to figure out a fragment, another interrupts your thoughts.
Boredoms have more structured albums (Super AE being an exceptional example) and those with a more flowing emotion/ambience, but this album has the element of surprise. It’s fun because you never know what the next sound to emit from your speakers will be, and it’s exciting both because it touches places all over the musical spectrum and because it’s mixed in a raw and powerful way. Boredoms always sound like a collective letting loose emotionally and physically, and Pop Tatari is no exception. It’s about as wild as they get, and it’s enthralling.
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