There’s no contest: without hesitation, album title of the week goes to Pope on a Rope. It’s not just the obvious punning quality, but the amusing mental image it conjures. Then there’s the evocation of the pontiff swinging by his neck – or perhaps that’s just me.
Still, there’s more to Pope on a Rope than an attention-stealing title, and this album is a collection of quirky post-punk flavoured indie with a penchant for the unexpected turn and the occasional burst of discord. It might be a bit of a departure for Simon Burgess, the man who is Pope, and who’s spent a number of years languishing in obscurity while pursuing and peroducing radio-friendly projects such as The Skidmarks, (the bands behind the seminal works ‘Never Mind the Sex Pistols, This is Bollocks’ (containing potential hits like ‘Bloody Arse’, ‘Me Fookin Motor’s ‘Ad It’ and ‘Snot’) and ‘The Beatles’ (which spawned classics like ‘Ian Paisley’s Cunt’, ‘You’re Crap’ and ‘I Hate Everything’).
With his third album as Pope, Mr Burgess has gone straight and has his eyes set on world domination. Yeah, right. It begins with ‘The Drag of Sloth’, which sounds like a vaudeville tribute to The Stranglers. After the weirdness of ‘Still Life’, ‘Bunker Hill’ is a relatively straightforward acoustic number that shows he can write conventional songs (something again demonstrated on the final track, ‘Room 4’), but generally prefers not to. This is evidenced by the brilliantly off-kilter ‘Dummy’s Boy’, an explosion of drum machine beats misfiring sporadically across bleeps and doodles, underpinned by a grimy synth bass. The vocals, half-spoken, half sung and heavily processed sneering malevolence deliver lines like ‘stomping around like a stupid baby / why on earth did god give you testes / you’re like a tourist to the male gender... annoying quiet locals like me’.
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Eschewing conventional subject matter, Pope keeps it quirky on ‘It’s a Cupboard’, sung – according to the press release – from the perspective of someone admiring a piece of trendy furniture. Oh yes.
After being refused clearance, Burgess was forced to ditch his twisted take on ‘Imagine’, and we’re instead given a reworked version entitled ‘Just Imagine’. It sounds like a fantasy version of a collaboration between New Order and Depeche Mode from 1982. It’s also rather good – which more or less sums up the album as a whole.
Pope Online
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