Pop scar – Popscars
Everyone has a saying their mother used when they were young. “If you can’t say anything nice about someone, don’t say anything at all” seems to be a popular one. My mother never said this. She used to say “There is nothing worse than wasted potential”. Let’s forget what that says about me for now and move on to the subject matter.
Popscars, the almost eponymous album from Dublin band Pop Scar, is not a good album. And it’s not a good album because, you guessed it, it wastes its potential. Over and over again. Most tracks seem to have the potential to be so much more than it ultimately proves.
A prime example of this is ‘Bubbletoe Shoes & A Pin Striped Suit’. It’s a song with a nice bouncy beat full of witty pop culture references. It’s a song that seems to build and build before being cut off suddenly before anything is properly constructed.
Opening track ‘Life Sentence’, too, has some admirable qualities but the introduction of a gospel choir one minute into an album seems unusual especially as it is only used again once on the album: this time on the penultimate track; the quasi-hymn ‘C’Mon Lord’.
Tracks such as ‘Gene’, ‘Never’ and ‘Miracle Pill’ each have a decent base on which to stand but ultimately sound hollow and melodramatic. The same result occurs in four of the five (yes five!) of the tracks that are just spoken words over music. Either the music or the tone of voice fails to resonate with the emotions from which the words were born.
The fifth spoken track is in a language I don’t understand (I assume it’s Spanish) so whether the tones work with the words, I can’t say. Either way, there is minimal impact.
Having said all this, however, I wish to reiterate my initial point that this album, while ultimately rather flawed, shows potential. Pop Scar show an eye for lyrics and an ear for a tune frequently throughout the album. The main problem is that, at no point on this album, can they marry the two to create the sort of tracks of which they seem capable.
Perhaps they will produce a top album sometime in the future. For now though, this isn’t it.