Vocalist Georgia Nott is dressed in silk in a Marilyn Monroe-esque wig, sitting atop a shag carpet next to her pornstache-wearing producer.
Instead of honing in on a specific sound and era, Broods takes a shotgun blast approach, borrowing from the past in their recent and pretty messy album, “Don’t Feed The Pop Monster.”
In 2014, Broods released their debut album “Evergreen,” a record of its time that sat among minimal pop acts like Lorde. Light and airy, “Evergreen” sounds how the title suggests. In the album, Georgia had a breathy voice that was cushioned beautifully by her collaborator and brother Caleb Nott’s instrumentation.
2016 saw the release of “Conscious,” Brood’s sophomore album which served as a darker and dancier version of their first effort. Though it slightly deviated from their established sound, it was successful in its intention and execution.
Funny enough, “The Pop Monster’s” lack of sonic cohesion is recognized (perhaps knowingly) in the opening track “Sucker”. “I’m just a sucker for everything,” sings Georgia. “Oh the fashion never lasts / Phasing in and out so fast.” The song is catchy, like something you’d hear after the credits roll in an ‘80s movie.
Musical fashions phase in and out from song to song, with “Peach,” featuring an up-pitched vocal sample that exists only in chart-chasing pop songs of yesteryear. It sounds dated — not in a ‘70s or throwback type of way — but in an “I bought this Forever 21 shirt a year ago and the tagline isn’t hip anymore” type of way.
Speaking of shopping mall retail stores, “Falling Apart” features a synth blip that makes the song sound like something played in a department store in the late ‘90s. Match that with a vocoder and an addicting melody, the listener is finally left with a song that is genuinely good.
“Dust” sounds freakishly like Wolf Alice, another modern-day rock act that relies heavily on ‘90s grunge influences. Just like the previous track, this one manages to pull it off – barely. And in case listeners haven’t noticed, Broods has now referenced four different decades of music on one album.
“Too Proud” is barely worth mentioning. Caleb’s vocals are grating and yet another example of a music duo walking into the pitfall of letting the producer sing.
Near the end of the album, things pick up, but in an exceedingly confusing way. “Old Dog” has a catchy vocal sample and fun instrumentation, but it sounds more like Santigold or Phantogram than it does like Broods.
The confusion continues (now in a good way) on “Hospitalized,” with choppy and manically- delivered vocal runs. If a music video were to exist for this song, it would surely be of a hospital patient tearing around a clinic in a gurney, strobe lights blaring.
Georgia’s songwriting sees more strength on “Everything Goes (Wow).” Like a soothing morning sunrise, Georgia sings, “We’re all on our way / To that world beyond our days / If we walk in the sun / We’ll have peace when it’s done.”
A dancy piano is strewn throughout, reminiscent of a late 2000s Sara Bareilles track. With previous tracks that touch on feelings of hopelessness and distraction, this song is like the light at the end of the tunnel.
The closing track, “Life After,” features an extremely heavy, crunchy bass that serves as an anchor, pulling the listener down and away from the crystalline keys and synths above the surface. “Where the sea always feels warm all the way down / There’s no days, no weeks, no months, no years to go wrong.”
This is ultimately what “Don’t Feed The Pop Monster” sounds like — no days, no weeks, no months, no years, no direction or definitive period. There are good songs peeking in and out of the tracklist, but quite a bit of filler and scatterbrained direction make it a weird listen.
It seems Georgia and Caleb were hypnotized by their rose-colored glasses, their desire to reference becoming a hindrance more than a strength. They fed the pop monster. No — they brought the whole damn buffet to the pop monster, who is now sick and hungover, struggling to digest the smorgasbord.
Originally published in The Daily Titan on February 20, 2019.