Review | Pop Will Eat Itself at The Wedgewood Rooms: 'Is everybody 'appy? I'd say so'
It was a pleasant surprise when Pop Will Eat Itself released a new album last year – their first in a decade.
More so that Delete Yourself was a fine entry into their discography.
They kick off proceedings tonight with its opening track, The Slammer, which serves as a self-referential introduction to the five-piece. Although looking at the number of vintage PWEI T-shirts around the building, few here need a reintroduction.
The band are currently in their 40th year (albeit with a lengthy hiatus in the middle), and while there have been lineup changes, original members co-frontman Graham Crabb and guitar/keys player Adam Mole retain that link to their ’80s/90s hey day.
And con-vocalist Mary Byker and bassist Davey Bennett have been there since the 2010 reformation so aren’t exactly new boys either.
The set perhaps leans too much on Delete Everything material for those who want a pure nostalgia-fest, but it’s commendable that the band aren’t willing to embrace that fate. It’s not as if the sample-heavy collisions of rock and dance in the new numbers are stylistically out of place with the older material – Incarcerate The Rich and Play a Fast ‘Un more than earn their places in the set.
But it is on the earlier singles that the crowd really come alive, none more so than when Crabb roams the crowd during Dance of The Mad.
Their mile-wide playful streak is clear on the likes of former indie nightclub staples Wise Up! Sucker, Def. Con. One and Can U Dig It?
The energy levels from the band are impressive – it’s not often you see guys in their 60s climbing on their keyboard stand, while still playing, as Mole manages here. Byker and Crabb bounce relentlessly throughout.
But they also have there more serious side. Their Law – the Poppies’ version of their collaboration with The Prodigy, originally a response to the Criminal Justice Bill – remains a defiant middle finger to authority.
And Ich Bin Ein Auslander (“I am a foreigner”) is sadly as relevant as ever.
Any band with an extensive back catalogue is always going to have to leave out fan favourites, but their choice to leave out any other post-reformation material is an interesting one.
However, as the refrain of 1992 single Bulletproof – a main set highlight – asks: “Is everybody ‘appy?” Judging from the faces around me, I’d say so.