(LTI/Inertia)

New wave made by Ramones fans from China

I guess they had the 80s in China too, because Beijing three-piece New Pants seem to be intimately familiar with the decade. They’ve got a synth pop number called Culture Club and for two songs they go all-out Joy Division, although even miserabilism sounds cheery in Chinese. Bye Bye Disco waves at the 70s as if they only just left in one of only a couple of missteps on Dragon Tiger Panacea; their broken-English chanting coming off as clumsy rather than cute, especially when they spell disco out, “D-I-I-C-O.” The other misstep is an acoustic-guitar strumming venture into Cantopop that doesn’t quite suit their inability to sing with straight faces. It’s redeemed by the stomping electro of Everybody with its deliriously dumb repetition and the spastic funk of the kung-fu-movie sampling title track with its own take on the Asian Riff that announces the appearance of East Asian characters in bad movies. Apparently New Pants started out as a punk band before going all new-wave bleepcore, the evidence being in You’re My Superstar: “Gabba gabba gabba hey!” Otherwise it’s all grin-inducing bloops and gronks and keyboard wash. Even though the 80s has been mined for catchy hooks till the seam is nearly empty it can still sound fresh when filtered through another culture’s frame of reference, and that’s a feat New Pants achieve with style.

***½

JODY MACGREGOR

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