Mister Pop

Mister Pop stays the course for the rest of its relatively compact 10-song, 34-minute length, reshaping the Clean's core components into poignant bossa nova instrumentals ('Simple Fix'), propulsive Krautrock-outs ('Tensile') and, as only they can, bizarro fuzz-organ jigs that resemble White Light/White Heat-era Velvets auditioning for "Riverdance" ('Moonjumper').

Apart from these standout tracks, it's a solid album that shows off the individual members' songwriting skills and holds together very well as a display of smart and savvy modern pop.

Mister Pop isn’t going to set anyone’s world alight, but it might make yours a fractionally nicer place to be.

The band’s first studio album in eight years takes the Farfisa-surf luminescence of 2003’s must-own, career-spanning Anthology deeper into psychedelia, for good and ill.

Mister Pop doesn’t quite measure up even to the first few Clean records from their third return (Modern Rock is an overlooked gem); it feels a bit haphazard at times, the instrumentals don’t need to be there, and Robert Scott’s song isn’t as potent as usual.

Mister Pop is at once an old friend and a stotal stranger. [Nov 2009, p.100]

How these twee-approved embellishments help the record are hard to prove, seeing as none of them give it the edge it sorely needs. Yet, in the least, the gentle sighs render Mister Pop as intermittently pretty as it is prosaic, and point toward a new, if unstable, direction for the band.

While there's something comforting about the way this cult college-rock band never seems to age, it's frustrating that a group that releases so little can repeat itself so much. Mister Pop, then, is for Clean diehards only.