The Pop Corporation

Every so often, a band gets a tonne of interest from the chatter of the editorial classes that have their rent paid for them by their parents in extortionately expensive cities, and we all have to put up with it.

While recessions ensure that culture springs up in the rest of a country, the would-be taste makers of capitals look for music so wilfully hip and confusing, that they try and make a thing of it, so the rest of us get jealous. Think of Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong getting fawned over by NME writers in years past, giving their album 8/10 even though the thing didn’t ever get released.

Enter The Femcels who are either a byproduct of this kind of stupid hype, or they’re here to exploit the shit out of it.

Of course, oh so hipster music is nothing new, and it isn’t always bad – but it is a sign of the times. Listen to The Mouldy Peaches or Playboi Carti, and you may well enjoy it, but you could equally ask yourself ‘what the fuck is going on here? Is this really a thing?’

In that state of confusion, The Femcels are the latest outfit to ask questions of the listener and about the noise around them. They’re two attractive girls who seem chaotic and messy, not that arsed about music, want to be famous and might not be telling the truth about anything.

Deal with it.

It’s all so meta and post-ironic that one way or the other, you’re going to have a strong reaction to it, even if that ends up being simple irritation.

‘I Have To Get Hotter’ from the off, is all primary colours, cig butts and mobile phone charms, layered up with cool insincerity and dead-eyed zingers. It switches between outright nasty and pretty funny, and to some, that’ll be catnip. If you like drag queens reading each other for filth, the shark eyed ambition of the worst person you know on a reality show, and the whole too cool for regular meals and you can’t sit with us shtick, you might end up feeling The Femcels gravitational pull.

Track titles leap out at you, like ‘Please Don’t Stab Yourself (Like Elliot Smith)’, ‘Indiest Girl At The School’ and ‘You’re Gay And You’re In Love With Me (Please Let Me Touch Your Boobs)’, backed by cheap keyboards and vocals that kinda ape Coco & Clair Clair’s eyerollcore. It’s almost designed to not really give a fuck what you think, which of course will have rock critics pondering out loud, if that’s the most punk thing ever?

By no stretch of the imagination is this trad ‘punk’ – but it is a record that flirts with bad taste, and has a certain anti-music stance that it’s difficult to not find yourself wondering if this is going to gain traction because it will wind up the kind of classic rock bores that punk set out to antagonise in the first place.

It’s almost like it’s pop born from Brain Rot, which you could argue we’re in desperate need of in this Doom Scroll era, and if it can make you laugh and bug the hell out of you in the process, then this attention seeking is maybe the kind of music we deserve.

This all might sound like a dismissal of the songs, but truly it isn’t. Fact is, there’s nothing polished or safe about this album, and that has to be applauded in some way. It’s also resolutely not A.I., but then again, you get the impression that this pair wouldn’t care too much about your vague intellectual protestations about something boring like that, and straight up tell you to go kill yourself or something, for their own amusement.

The album is feral, the girls clearly don’t give a shit about what any boring critic thinks about them, we’re not even sure if they meeeean it maaaaan, and who honestly cares about all that stuff when they’ve somehow landed themselves a corner of the music world where they’re being dubbed the hottest thing around right now?

They’ve been telling people they’ve been shagging older Yuppies, mining rock stars for magic, and all kindsa stuff – it can be exhausting.

They’re absolute nightmares and we don’t know that this kind of music will propel them to superstardom, but they’re certainly getting noticed, and isn’t that what pop music is all about?

You’re going to have to make your own mind up about this record, because for us, we’re still feeling winded by the whole experience. This is music made by girls who watch movies on their laptops on unmade beds. This is the noise in the head of bored young women being hit on by accountants midweek. This is album says more about modern life than those art school post punk bands, and it’s doing it with a chewed up straw left in an alcopop.

What the hell is going on?