Paper Television

You might hear the term “pop” thrown around in reference to The Blow’s latest album Paper Television, but don’t be fooled into thinking this is anything like conventional mainstream pop music. Think about it, when’s the last time you heard Lionel Richie’s “Dancing On The Ceiling” compared to post-punk, or Wang Chung’s “Everybody Have Fun Tonight” deemed anything like electro-clash? Somewhere along the line indie kids got the idea that it was cool to call their music “pop” simply because the lyrics were cheesy. Truth be told, The Blow’s Paper Television is an indie album made up of cutsie female vocals laid over some laptop bleeps and synthesizer effects. The lyrical content lingers around relationship issues and doesn’t really expand much beyond—that part of it fits into the pop paradigm, but the pipsqueak vocals and glitchy, DIY, electronica instrumentation and jagged melodies are anything but “poppy.” If you own two or more albums from the Kill Rock Stars catalog you might like this, but if you’re looking for "real" pop music, you’d be better off digging out those old NSYNC CDs.

•