If pop music isn’t truly evil, it’s certainly got a pretty bad rap sheet. Take a wander into a suburban nightclub, and you’ll be bombarded with cheap and nasty pop music with the artistic integrity of Mike Love’s Beach Boys fronted by Justin Bieber.
The title of Suzie Stapleton’s new EP, Obladi Diablo, translates roughly to ‘pop music is evil’. Stapleton might be slightly tongue-in-cheek, but it’s clear she’s doing her best to combat the imbalance between bad and good in the musical stakes. Each of the tracks on the EP is an antidote to the insidious disease that is flaccid pop. The combination of Stapleton’s emotive vocals and gothic-folk violin on My Cons Are Making A Cripple Out Of Me renders the track a cathartic narrative waiting to break apart; Song Of The Artesian Water takes Banjo Patterson and supplants him into the Axeman’s Jazz with Marianne Faithful playing the part of Tex Perkins.
Bring Back The Night is darkness with the distant light of emotional enlightenment; we’ve all been here, and banged our head against the wall of despair. On Hit Stapleton is the masochist, aware of what’s happening, but powerless to stop it; the prevailing tone of The Last Note is positive, even if there’s a lot of heavy shit that’s gone down that’ll never be forgotten no matter how many Cat Stevens records you play.
There’s a depth of expression and passion on Obladi Diablo you don’t find in the ordinary record. Pop music isn’t evil, but it needs a serious prod from songwriters like Suzie Stapleton to remind it just what good music can sound like.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: My Cons Are Making A Cripple Out Of Me
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: MARIANNE FAITHFUL, PATTI SMITH
In A Word: Passionate
