The first wave of punk was still playing itself out in 1979 when
the Pop Group upended all accepted notions about music that went against the grain with their dazzling and assaultive debut album,
Y. For all the rage and challenge in British punk, it was born out of the same formal structures
Chuck Berry had blocked out in the mid-'50s, but
the Pop Group adopted a scorched-earth policy towards rock's past. Drummer
Bruce Smith and bassist
Simon Underwood were perfectly capable of playing tough, funky rhythms, but just as often, they provided a wavering pulse as
Gareth Sager and
John Waddington tore shards of noise and showers of undefined sounds from their guitars (
Sager also threw in the occasional saxophone blurt), and vocalist
Mark Stewart howled like a shrieking ranter when he wasn't murmuring like a wounded prisoner trying to share secret information. There are clear links to funk and dub in
Y (the latter emphasized by the presence of producer
Dennis Bovell), and numbers like "We Are Time" and "Don't Call Me Pain" suggest a more discordant version of the music
Gang of Four were creating at roughly the same time. But ultimately, this music has just as much to do with free jazz or the experimental approach of
Fred Frith and
Derek Bailey in
the Pop Group's refusal to obey any rules other than their own -- only beefed up and made more aggressive. The daunting strength they find in exploring the post-apocalyptic sonic landscape they devised was as challenging as anything in the rock (or post-rock) canon. It might seem counterintuitive for the mix to often bury or distort beyond recognition
Stewart's screeds against the standing order, but even without lyrics,
Y would sound like a call for revolution, a fearless salvo on behalf of a creative vision without compromise of any form. Decades after its release,
Y remains a challenging work that feels contemporary, and much of the experimental rock community is still trying to catch up with it. ~ Mark Deming
