[review 2004: the best of the year]

A synthpop band that writes a song about a robot friend and the end of the world? That’s a novelty. A synthpop band that writes songs about stalking guys, stealing bikes and duct tape? Still a novelty, but one that doesn’t get old. Meet Freezepop, a synthpop band out to rokk your undies off.

Fancy Ultra-Fresh should be a disposable pop album. It’s a one-trick-pony (”Hey, dude, it’s the 80s again! No, seriously!”). The band members all have fake (or are they?) names like Liz Enthusiasm and The Other Sean T. Drinkwater. All their songs are composed and performed on the Yamaha QY70, a tiny pocket synthesizer. It shouldn’t work. Plenty of bands do this better on paper�everyone from Ladytron to Metric to Le Tigre have had a horse in the electro sweepstakes, and some of them make damned good pop music. Freezepop are far more faithful to the 80s synthpop sound, though, and isn’t the attraction behind the neo-electro sound the ironic detachment?

But what sells Freezepop isn’t that it’s hilariously over the top; it’s that the songs are so much fun, you forget the band’s so over the top. If you’ve heard or seen a Freezepop concert, you know the weird names, the vinyl fashions and the single-synthesizer gimmick don’t matter; it’s just three kids on stage playing awesome blippy songs about how cool their fans are and stealing bikes. “I Am Not Your Gameboy” would’ve been the obvious single, with quirky lyrics, a sweetly chirpy chorus and a fun speak-n-spell intro. “Chess King” is complete 80s cheese, with a litany of pop culture references and hilarious drum effects straight out of that Yello song in Ferris Bueller, and yet it’s amazingly catchy at the same time. Even when Freezepop turns the lights down for “Outer Space” and “Emotions & Photons,” the emphasis is on catchy hooks and a pleasant, bubbly soundscape. Freezepop are serious about being able to play all their songs on the QY70, and unlike some bands with a gimmicky instrument (hello, Quasi), they pull it off almost without you noticing it. By the end of the album, you’re not at all thinking about how it’s done with synthesizers, or even about how retro it sounds.

Of course, when it suits them, Freezepop pull out the 80s gambit. “Chess King” is a good example, but even better is the bonus track�a full-on cover of the Jem And The Holograms theme song. Yeah. As if you needed another reason to love Freezepop�Gameboys, robots and Jem. If you don’t get it yet, I’m afraid you never will.