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Sep 19, 2014 Web Exclusive By Frank Valish

Band Name: The Death of Pop

Members: Angus James, Oliver James, Thom James, Isaac Jones, George Abram

Where: London via Bournemouth, U.K.

Foundation and Formation: After playing in various bands throughout their youth, Angus James and his brother Oliver (Ollie) began writing songs over the Christmas holiday in 2012. When the first two songs they had written, “Nowhere” and “Don’t Hang Around,” were discovered by British blog Crack in the Road, Angus (guitar/vocals/keys) and Oliver (guitar/vocals) recruited their other brother Thom (drums), as well as Isaac Jones (bass) and George Abram (a non-musical fifth member of the band who assists in writing and does the band’s artwork) and started a proper band.

“After that, blogs started writing about us,” says Angus. “It was a weird thing, because we only had two songs online, and we were probably getting more attention than we’d ever gotten in any other band we were in.”

The Death of Pop has already released a digital collection of songs it wrote in 2013 on its Bandcamp page, as well as two limited release EPs, one on flexi-disc and one on vinyl. The band is currently courting record labels.

Reference Points: Ride, Slowdive, Lush, My Bloody Valentine, and Teenage Fanclub.

Says Angus of the influence of the shoegazer bands noted above on his band’s sound: “It feels a bit strange, because I know that nowadays those are the bands that get name dropped a lot because shoegaze is fashionable. But we were always genuinely into that kind of thing. I’ve been into it for quite a while, almost before it came back. I’ve been listening to [My Bloody Valentine’s] Loveless for a long time. It’s almost something you couldn’t really namedrop—Loveless—nowadays because it seems like such an obvious thing as part of the shoegaze movement. But bands like Lush are a huge influence on us. Chapterhouse. And little obscure bands from that early ‘90s era, like The Telescopes.”

Continues Angus: “We also have a big interest in pop music. We like a lot of the’80s stuff and a lot of bubblegum sunshine pop from the ‘60s. I think because of the way we write songs, the songs are often really poppy-sounding, and then the way we produce them takes them from being too poppy to making them sound sort of wobbled up…. I think a lot of the shoegaze sound comes out of the fact that we’re just experimenting with different sounds. If you keep adding reverberating guitar and tremolo effects to a mix, you end up with a shoegaze-y wall of sound even though maybe you weren’t always intentionally doing that.”

Sound and Vision:

Releases: Tombola (tape) (out of print) (self-released/Bandcamp), Soundbox Record Player EP (self-released), Two Thousand and Thirteen (digital) (self-released/Bandcamp), and Fifths (Flexizine EP) (Art is Hard).

Links:

www.facebook.com/TheDeathOfPop

www.thedeathofpop.bandcamp.com

www.soundcloud.com/the-death-of-pop

[Pick up or download the current September/October 2014 issue of Under the Radar to read more from our interview with The Death of Pop.]