Sometimes, the most impactful music you encounter is the stuff that – at first listen – you simply don’t know what to do with. At some point in the late `80s, an upperclassman friend of mine at college first played me The Pop Group, knowing I was a big fan of post-punk bands like Gang of Four, XTC, Public Image Ltd. and Killing Joke. Regrettably, I must concede that in as much I’d love to boast that I was onboard from the get-go, I just did not get it.
Disjointed, seemingly frantic, frequently completely discordant and seriously fucking weird, the rhythmic-but-raucous music by this ironically named combo seemed to barely hold together, ricocheting from echoey atmospherics to shrill cacophony, all anchored by the anguished hectoring and howling of a vocalist named Mark Stewart. Much like the sounds on the copy of No New York I’d unearthed at our college radio station, this Pop Group record – titled, cryptically, just Y and sheathed in a sleeve festooned with masked African tribesman (the photo taken by one Don McCullin, who also snapped the image of rioting Northern Ireland youth appropriated by Killing Joke for their first album) -- all just seemed too, well, WRONG. It made records I’d formerly considered daring and radical seem quite conventionally tame, by comparison.
Speaking of radical, The Pop Group were also pointedly political, slathering their album covers with slogans and deliberately provocative imagery, not unlike their uncompromising fellow countrymen in Crass. But unlike the purposefully blunt, brute-force sonic assault of Crass, The Pop Group’s singular blend of chaotic agitprop was deceptively nuanced, incorporating elements of deep dub, funk and so-called free jazz. While both bands plied their lyrical messages with fierce conviction, Crass sort of merely used music as a crude delivery method, whereas there was art all over the songs of The Pop Group.
I was eventually drawn in by tracks like “We Are Time” and their single “She Is Beyond Good & Evil” (a scathing-if-surreal rebuke of Margaret Thatcher), as they both employed recurring guitar parts that could almost be mistaken for proper riffs. But it was still Mark Stewart’s tireless bellowing that ruled the sonic landscape of these songs, sometimes screaming in the distant background and sometimes crying caustically right in your face, but absolutely NEVER NOT SEVERELY AND GENUINELY UPSET about something. That effect was always jarring.
Completely intrigued by the band’s willfully difficult and uncompromising sound and aesthetic, I eventually snapped up my own copy of Y, and, later, even more unwieldy records of theirs like the We Are All Prostitutes EP and For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder?, both of which are as bereft of happy-go-lucky light and joy as one might expect from such titles. But once familiar with their harrowing (but funky) style, it was that very unnerving, furious skronk that became the best part.
Like so many great bands, The Pop Group imploded after only five years together. And like so many other great bands, they reformed in the 2010’s and released two more albums that, if I’m being honest, I’ve never heard, although I remain slavishly devoted to those earlier records that initially scared the bejesus out of me.
Sadly, Mark Stewart’s death was announced today, silencing that disturbing, clarion voice for all time.
Beyond wanting to pay tribute to and evangelize their amazing music, I also wanted to share the interview below. Here, Stewart and Pop Group guitarist/collaborator speak with John Robb. I first saw it a year or two ago and I was totally struck by how jolly and jovial Mark Stewart comes across, completely at odds with his agonized stage presence.
Rest in peace, Mark Stewart.
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