Album Review: Polysics - Polysics Or Die!!!!

Author: Dollyrocker

Polysics. If you haven't heard them yet then you can console yourselves in the fact that their new(ish) album entitled; Polysics or Die!!!! is a collection of the cream of the crop from their last three LPs and is available in the shops as we speak. In a fairly similar way to The Hives, Polysics had been around for a few years before getting much press, and I certainly hadn't heard of them until they headlined FROG! in July.

Now Dave, co-promoter of aforementioned club, is no stranger to getting overexcited about things, and generally being on the pulse in terms of putting on new bands that are on their way up, (and in all fairness, a few rotten ones too..) was virtually foaming at the mouth when reviewing Polysics gig in retrospect, and it was on that basis that I picked up their most recent offering.

First of all, they are from Japan. It might just be me here, but I have often felt that a lot of the best music either seems to come out of Japan, or be heavily influenced by that whole scene, and Polysics proved to be no dissapointment. Oh sure, there are influences, Devo, Ramones, XTC, Wire, but it's all strung together with such good humour it actually reminds me more of early Supergrass. In Japanese, on poppers.

So, what have we got for our money then? Well, more fuzz scuzz power pop than you can shake a stick at for starters. On 'Black Out Fall Out' we get cutesy girl vocals from Kayo, with more moog droogs and SFA style harmonies for those of us with more of an ear for melody. 'My Sharona' sounds like Fisherspooner jamming with The Futureheads with one of the robots from Daft Punk jumping in on the (terminally hip) bandwagon.

According to their website, Polysics sing the theme song for "Super Robot Monkey Team Hyerforce Go!" on adventure JETIX, and I can totally see why they got picked. Sci-fi power pop for the millennium. Now if they were on tour supporting Le Tigre, that really WOULD be something...

Go buy.