Review: Rep by Pop's Cell Phone Camera

For an average Gen-X guy like me who grew up in the 80’s listening to The Cure, The Thompson Twins, Joy Division and New Order, Bauhaus, Gene Loves Jezebel and other MTV-like Euro New Wave/Post punk acts, Cell Phone Camera, the new album from the Canadian outfit Rep by Pop instantly grabbed my attention and gets regular play on my show The New Spin. Though the album’s punchier first half is stronger than the more U2-like rockin’ second half, Cell Phone Camera is all very fun and upbeat, fusing together everything I loved about the 80’s and then some. For you youg’uns, I’d put them in the Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, Cut Copy, Of Montreal, and The Rapture family.

Timothy Kingston’s voice has an uncanny ability to drift from sounding like Robert Smith to Bono to that lead singer dude of Gene Loves Jezebel in “Spray Paint.” A few songs sound like early U2 backed by the early Cure, and “Bisbifren”, “Comfort Me and Comfort You” and “Cell Phone Camera” have immediate hooks with the latter having a wicked wah-wah/flanging guitar patch I salivate over every time I hear it. I love "Unknown" with its transcendent, uplifting quality.

This band has the potential to blow up huge and “sell out,” though that’s near-impossible to do these days, and as any new spinner might know by now, I don’t like bands that stick to formulas, but nonetheless I wish great success for this band. Though Rep by Pop is clearly inspired by the 80’s sound, thankfully they aren’t trying to copy it so much as use the sounds of the 80s like an artist does with a palette of colors. The challenge for them, for any band really, is to push their familiar sound rather than be swallowed by it. Needless to say, Cell Phone Camera stands out in all the right ways. Here's a vid:

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