The Pop Group: Citizen Zombie | Album Review

If I had opened a fortune cookie just after the start of January and been informed that I would be on the receiving end of one of the biggest surprises of my life, I would have scoffed (the cookie, that is) and threw away the small piece of paper.

Yet here we are listening to and actually really liking the first album in over 35 years by Bristol's The Pop Group, a band so disordered and unlistenable back in the day they made PiL's Death Disco sound like The Seekers' Mornington Ride.

Produced by longtime fan Paul Epworth (yes, that's Adele's producer/co-songwriter), Citizen Zombie sounds more "now" than The Pop Group ever did, and, perhaps by virtue of the producer's presence, on occasion the regrouped Bristol contrarians actually (albeit, one senses, quite reluctantly) live up to their name.

[ thepopgroup.net ]