Popular Culture. Now there’s a fucking great name for a new band. A bit daring, too. No room for anything other than Solid Gold Hitz with a name like that – and guess what?

Popular Culture deliver, over and over; and remarkably, in new ways each time.

Apparently, Popular Culture is the result of holing up in a home studio for two years; it sounds to me like it’s the result of a lot of talent and the careful application of patience.

What I like most is that the waypoints are blindingly obvious – the bands I compare his music to are no educated guesses.

This is endlessly refreshing, because we’re in an era of bands whose sole starting point is to find an established rock sound that hasn’t been used for a while, alter a few superfluous dynamics (haircuts, attitude, more/less synths) and claim to be the Next Big Thing.

Popular Culture cuts out the bullshit. The tracks that sounds like New Order sound very obviously like New Order, but with the finesse, brio and craft that ensure the songs are easily the most important thing happening.

This track, Affair, sounds a lot like The Jesus and Mary Chain, and while I would usually find a similarity like this entirely tiresome, this song is so adept at putting a finger on the *exact same* visceral thrills that the JAMC did, you can’t help but smile as your synapses light up.

You’ll have to buy Popular Culture’s album (which is highly recommended) to listen to opener Spirit – which warps from a long aching gasp of keyboard-choral groans into a New Order-esque pop crescendo – but you’ll kick yourself if you don’t hunt it down.

“Popular culture no longer applies to me,” sang Eddie Argos of Art Brut. Popular Culture (the artist) is having it both ways.

MORE: http://popularculturemusic.com