VIDEO: Freezepop, "Less Talk, More Rokk"
In the hands of almost any band, “Just give us more rock” would be, at best, a wry throw-away, at worst a lazy cliché. But Freezepop aren’t just any band: since 1999, the local trio have cut hard against the Boston rock grain, eschewing the usual guitar/bass/drums æsthetic for one based purely on electronics — a retro-futuristic brand of electro-pop that conjures Day-Glo MTV spots, Martha Quinn, and hairspray-impaired Brits wielding keytars. So when in “Less Talk More Rokk,” the house-beaten opening track of Freezepop’s new Future Future Future Perfect (Cordless/Rykodisc), Jussi Gamache (stage name Liz Enthusiasm) intones, “Give us more rock” (and “intones” is the way to describe her icy sweet, not quite emotionless, almost matter-of-fact delivery), she does so with an alluring wink and a nod. “Let’s keep the party going, yo/We’ve got nowhere else to be/Someone yells, ‘Less talk more rock!’/Mostly unironically.”
Freezepop were the brainchild of Kasson Crooker, a veteran of two ’90s bands with goth leanings and ties to the Castle Von Buhler label, Sirensong and Splashdown. But what brought the band together — aside from a taste for ’80s new wave that Crooker (stage name the Duke of Pannekdeker) shared with Gamache and Sean Drinkwater (a/k/a the Other Sean T. Drinkwater) — was a piece of equipment: a Yamaha QY-70 hand-held sequencer. It’s not the most, uh, technologically advanced piece of equipment. Crooker explains, “I had gotten this little box. And I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to do a whole band based around this little box, with no other gear, just this one stupid little sequencer.’ Splashdown was kind of serious, and doing shows was really complicated. And I was like, ‘Let’s do something really easy and really dumb.’ And then I got introduced to Jussi through a mutual friend and I said, ‘I hear you sing and that you like Duran Duran: do you want to form a dance synth band?’ ”
Crooker and Drinkwater were already acquainted through the latter’s association with Castle Von Buhler: he was in the provocatively named Veronica Black Morpheus Nipple. And the three found that their shared fondness for classic synth-pop was matched by an appreciation for songcraft. It’s why, when the band celebrate the release of their third full-length tonight (Thursday the 27th) at the Middle East downstairs, they’ll be joined by their friend guitar-rock bandleader Ad Frank, not a bunch of other synth acts or DJs.
“We play with a lot of rock bands,” Drinkwater reflects as we sit around a table at Carberry’s in Cambridge. “And I think we prefer to book our band in rock clubs with good rock/pop bands rather than with other electronic bands, because we tend to have more in common with them. Oh, and there aren’t really synth-pop clubs.”
But over the past several years, as neo new wave has become a trend, more and more rock clubs are hosting synth-pop nights. And it’s to Freezepop’s advantage that they can do the rock-club thing and also fit in among DJs at a dance club. Drinkwater: “Our last big tour was in 2004, and a lot of the shows ended up being things like a Friday electro night, where for 40 minutes in between DJs Freezepop comes up and plays a set. We’ve done a lot of shows like that. That’s something that a rock band would have a hard time doing.”
Crooker: “But we really do prefer playing with more traditional bands. It all goes back to songwriting. You’re playing with bands who take an interest in the craft of writing songs. And when you play these club nights, you’re playing to an audience who are used to all the songs being about tits and ass.”
Not that Freezepop are averse to being a little risqué. One of the more amusing tracks on the new disc is the Drinkwater-sung “Do You Like My Wang?”, which toys with two quite different notions of “equipment.” But it’s a minor detour on a disc that frames lyrics about the usual pop-song fare: romantic insecurity in “Thought Balloon,” romantic release in “Frontload,” hitting the club circuit in “Afterparty.” And though the synth-based arrangements give a chill to the overall tone of the album, Freezepop are by no means an experiment in Kraftwerking man/machine automation. The synths, sequencers, and slippery electronic beats in “Pop Music Is Not a Crime” may put up a cold front, but it’s by no means impenetrable, especially since the band have moved beyond the QY-70 to incorporate more sophisticated synths and sequencers. “We used real drums this time,” Drinkwater boasts — samples of real drums, that is. It’s music that melts in your mouth but not in your hands.
What with the cool allure of Jussi’s voice and the resolve of Crooker and Drinkwater to place hooks before novelty, Freezepop have gained a sizable following over the past half-dozen years. But credit also the exposure they’ve gotten through video games. Freezepop tunes have graced Amplitude, Dance Dance Revolution, and, yes, Guitar Hero I and II. “It’s great,” says Drinkwater. “You don’t lose the rights to anything, and suddenly you have two and a half million copies of your song in kids’ laps. It couldn’t be a better situation for us. Now we can go play a show out of town and there will be 500 people there.”
