After an eight year hiatus, Pope return with their sophomore album: Big F-cking Music (BFM). An album beset with towering riffs and reverb rich hooks, BFM offers honesty in the music without the need for nostalgia.
FEELING GOOD WITH THE FORMULA
Eight years is an age to go quiet in guitar-band years, but Pope’s return with BFM (Big F*cking Music) lands like Marty McFly and his sweated brown from the Delorian. Whilst the landscape may have shifted and playlist positioning now the order of the day, the New Orleans trio remain lifers who still predominantly care about big loud drums, big fuzzy hooks and big f-cking music. The sort of sound that has parents banging on practice room walls.
BFM does exactly what it says on the tin: 13 tracks of bug, melody-first rock driven by reverb-drenched drums and slapping bass guitars that square up like a last orders bar brawl. The reference points are easy and familiar – Teenage Fanclub and Dinosaur Jr, with some garage White Stripes for a bit of distortion. Yet, this isn’t so much an album of reviving that sound… no… this is about a formula and feeling good with it – and then playing it with total f*cking conviction – B…F…M.
Effortless Power-Pop
There’s a sumptuous guitar bend during the intro of opener Song Two; pure bedroom twiddling on a hook that doesn’t need perfecting. It is a broke scene-setting opener that’s more languid that it is raucous. Newboi instead is a real jolt – effortless power-pop with overdriven guitars, cracking snares and a chorus melody that you could hum immediately. The hook arrives naturally; you could be forgiven for missing the transition its that neatly built in.
Across the first half of the album, Pope do most of their work with natural feel and expressive guitar tone rather then swinging for anything too sophisticated. Sick Minute and Point of View are mid-tempo, head-nodders where the rhythm section plays your like a puppet on a string: kick and floor toms thudding under melodic baselines – with a dash of fuzz. The guitar work here is full of open chords and some delightful early noughties palm muting. Point Of View would slot neatly into any summer evening track listing – as long as the drinks are cold. The longevity of the tracks on this album will likely come from the ability to encapsulate mood over them as a collective.
Intimate Intermissions
Make You Feel maintains clarity amid ramping up the guitar saturation. There’s more drums swimming in reverb but only blurring the edges and not losing the sound. The vocal line here is more of the undercurrent than the crashing wave – that instead goes to the grungier riffs that don’t completely envelop the melody – but almost. It’s a quick heartbeat of a track but possibly one that showcases the band at their power-pop best.
Nothing For Nothing lets the band nudge forward their different side. Julia Steiner of Ratboys takes guest vocal on the track and she add a new angle as acoustic guitars are brought to the for and the electric leads drop from their previous highs to more like a 7. The percussion and mellotron give the song greater space and room to breathe – its an intimate intermission that redirects for a more rounded second half to the album.
There’s a more generic sound in the latter half of the album and it feels like the tightness of the first half is replaced by something much looser. No One (Kiss for a Treat) and SOLU keep the core sound intact but there’s a wider sprawl to the sound. This is the stoner-rock beginning to peel through. Town and Good Enough are solid individual track, each built around solid yet melancholy progressions and dense rhythm guitars, yet at the same time – and by this point of the album – they risk blurring into one another.
Inward Reckoning
The closing run of tracks does some of the more interesting work on the album. Back To The Centre plays like a pivot, with lyrics pushing towards reconnection and a gorgeous guitar arrangement that opens out without haste. John Thomas and Underdog bring through some grittier sounds: big riffs but with more ache in the vocals and more space between than the album’s opening tracks. The band talk about homecoming and inward reckoning – these are songs trying to revive the group after years of stagnation – and that’s not simple.
Small Sweaty Rooms and Buzzing Amps
BFM is ithe band’s first since 2017’s The Talent Champion, and it is framed as a continuation of a long-running friendship between this group; that said, it is not a flawless album. Inside the 13-track run is a 10-track indie-rock gem clamouring to break free. The back half loses some of the grit of the start and some of the mid-album tracks feel more filler than killer. Yet, it is a fun record and will liven up any party playlist. There’s big melodic noise that makes you want to hear them live in a small room with buzzing amps.
Pope: Bandcamp