Pop Will Eat Itself

Pop Will Eat Itself
The Piper, Hastings
26th Sept 2024

There is something great about a pop that is still eating itself on stage decades into a careering career without giving itself any hint of indigestion. The beastly Beastie midlands boys are now middle aged men but have lost none of that inventive zap and zing that made them work in the first place. 

The Piper is perfect for these shenanigans with its low roof and packed, large room only adding to the claustrophobic industrial rave vibes coming from the stage. The sheer heat of the bodies moving to the pulsating beat makes the whole thing feel like a high decibel cellar party for wild haired droogs who never grew up.

The Hastings show is a warm up for the band’s current British tour and is an instant sell out despite much going on in town tonight, with punk rock crew Menstrual Cramps playing the Pig venue just around the corner in a testament to just how many gigs and venues are active these days. 

Pop Will Eat Itself have their own crowd, though, and they and the band still look and sound like they have stepped out the pages of 2000 AD magazine. The night is back to another future, and the Poppies’ punk rock take on the late Eighties hip hop culture still sees a sawn up lo-fi vibe to their big booming beats, cut and pasted with pre-Nine Inch Nails sonic adventures. The reason they still sound so urgent and vital is that they were always far more adept and creative at this kind of stuff than they were letting on.

These days, three out of the original four members are still together, with Clint Mansell being the only Poppie not present due to him living in LA and writing genius film soundtracks. Clint is here in spirit, though, and the rest of the band have that bonhomie that the decades can bring, with Graham Crabb fronting the band along with Mary Byker. Both of them trade vocals and are bouncing Duracell bunnies to the itching, compulsive beats surrounding them. Richard March still makes the guitar noise, and Adam Mole waves his keyboard around with a gonzoid glee.

They play the hits, and they play new stuff that sounds even better. They transcend decades and they have a great time and still sound fucking great. It’s been a long time since their early band, the Wild And The Wandering, supported my band in Stafford in 1981, followed a couple of years later by the early Poppies machine gun Ramones rushes that got them first noticed. It has been a long and strange journey, but it’s still the same band utilising tech and mad ideas from the scrapyard of pop culture to create something to jam up the heat and party to.

Still eating the beat, the Poppies are still moving forward on their own terms. 

PWEI are our NIN – Trent Reznor knows…

~

All words by John Robb