I’ve got moods for Freezepop, and I consider that progress as a human being.
Future Future Future Perfect is their latest album. “Do You Like My Wang?” and “Afterparty” are absolute abortions, “Ninja of Love” and “Brainpower” are merely tired, “Do You Like Boys” and “He Says She Says” are cute enough, while “Swimming Pool,” “Less Talk More Rokk,” “Pop Music Is Not a Crime” and “Thought Balloon” are each excellent.
Freezepop is gen-x (anyone who got to ride the dotcom bubble) smitten with hipster (mop-topped little douchebags) — kids older than me crushing on kids younger than me. It is a little creepy, and at its best that’s why it works. There’s an undeniable distance in line two of “The music is loud/ The kids are so young/ All over the world/ They want to have fun.” It’s the sense of loss of a geeky girl who got cool too late in life for her dancing queen moment. The game of scenesterism has the same rules as Logan’s Run.
The juxtaposition of self-awareness with cutesiness is inherently pathetic. (You’ve been reading the Space Toast Pages.) “Frontload” gives away a desperation musically that the simple take-me-out-tonight lyrics try to conceal. “Swimming Pool” paints a nostalgia so heavy it smothers. The sense of being in the right place spatially but not temporally is what rescues Freezepop from its more precious moments. Future Future Future Perfect is at its best when it acknowledges that cutesy self-awareness really betrays a painful desire to be wanted.