Pozi – ‘Smiling Pools’
South London trio Pozi has returned with their second album, Smiling Pools. It’s the long-awaited follow-up to their 2019 debut album, PZ1.
Whilst there are some moments of genuine brilliance, for the most part, Smiling Pools is a rather dull and irritating listen, with the songs often dragging on, despite most being under five minutes. I thought my opinion would change after the first few listens, but it didn’t. The band might work under an explicitly minimalist tag, but the new offering lacks any real hook. That might be the intention, but what is the point if it feels so flat? Even the better junctures could be more scintillating.
The album kicks off with ‘What You Came For’. It’s an off-kilter piece driven by underwater-sounding textures, almost swooning vocals and Rosa Brook’s droning violin, interspersed with spoons and bright stabs of a synth. A repetitive number, whilst somewhat hypnotic, you’re snapped out of being fully immersed by the fact that there is no real movement, with the subject matter of forgetting what you came in a room for uninteresting in itself.
It is followed by the single ‘Slightly Shaking Cells’, a catchy burst of weird indie pop, arriving with a funky bassline, the optimistic piping of the violin, and an appealing vocal melody. The band blend the elements to a better effect than most of the other tracks on Smiling Pools here, with a host of interesting textures emerging from within the mix to add extra flavour. The track teeters on the edge of insanity as it slowly crawls to its cacophonous climax, with the components enveloping each other. This track could have been a little longer, but this is minimalism, after all.
‘Failing’ wastes no time in keeping the listener curious. Arriving with a more direct bassline and vocal melody, it is underpinned by one of the more pertinent themes on the record, as the group express total bafflement at 12 years of Tory rule and the disregard for human life it has brought. Pozi expresses that this sentiment might well be doomed in the press material but counterbalance it with a glimmer of hope, which is what they do well. The primarily melancholic slant of the music is offset by the bassline, which conveys their expressed sense of vague optimism despite the odds.
The post-punk teasers of the previous tracks are realised with ‘Pest Control’, another wonky moment that has its roots as much in the late 1970s and early 1980s as it does with contemporary groups such as Superorganism. All three band members link up to deliver an infectious choral performance, wherein the bass and violin dovetail again, with a sprinkling of electronic textures swirling in the background to add another dimension to this distinctly postmodern offering. Even though this piece is one of the most energetic on the album, I won’t be rushing back.
The ominous ‘Somnambulance’ is undoubtedly one of the better moments. “The threat over our existence seems to be constantly looming overhead in many forms, and the physical destruction of nature leaves us with a paralytic feeling. This song reflects us sleepwalking towards our destiny, unable to stop the inevitable,” band member Toby Burroughs says. The song’s musical slant scarcely reflects this, as it’s nowhere near as alarming as the message or reality is. Rosa Brook’s haunting vocals also add another welcome element to the dystopian sound, as the bass constantly delivers a 1-2 rhythm that elevates the darkness a little further.
The song is appropriately succeeded by ‘Through The Door’, a droning number representing the band at their most piercing. It’s a slow-building, layered cut with more prominent vocals than elsewhere and a bassline of pure quality – it’s not hard to imagine that this one goes off live. This is the side of things the band does so well, with the equally unsettling ‘M6 Toll’ supporting this. There are flecks of a certain Michael Gira-fronted band on these two tracks, particularly on the latter, with your ears pricked to attention, which should always be the main focus of any band. ‘M6 Toll’ ends in a creepy blast, and it’s very good.
After this, I could do without much of Smiling Pools. It becomes a rather irritating experience from this point onwards, with practically nothing offered by way of excitement. The vocals on ‘Heavenly’ are the opposite of the title, and ‘Faulty Receiver’ comes with one of the most annoying vocal melodies I’ve heard in a long time, despite the captivating motorik beat and amped-up bass. The album toes the line between experimental and genuinely terrible on songs such as ’24Deliveru’, indicative of the broader juncture British music finds itself at. It’s moments like these that make you wonder when people will start to become more critical again. The atmospheric drone at the end of the closing track, ‘A Walk in the Park’ is cool, though.
Smiling Pools has a lot of promise, but for the most part, it fails to tap into the evident areas of tangible excitement and instead offers a palette of tedious and often irritating sonics. It begs the question of where the actual market is for this kind of music outside of a select few grassroots venues.
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