Album Review
Poliça - United Crushers
4 StarsPoliça have finally drawn straws and found something to stick with.
Encompassing Poliça’s newfound love of pop and infectious dance, ‘United Crushers’ offers up a lesson in how to create something truly universal.
It is, however, an album of two halves; while filled with experimental tendencies, it comes plagued with dreaded topics, issues of politics, and sees the four-piece create something impressible to ignore. Sitting up and paying attention is required from the get-go.
The record soon sinks into a pattern of juxtaposition: tracks feel danceable and freeing, while conjuring images of America’s police trouble and drug trade, explicitly detailed in ‘Wedding’. ‘Top Coat’ breaks up the continuity with its dramatic, depressive downpour. before proceedings are slowed down.
‘Fish’ emerges as the album’s hot point and draws a halt in the album, before ‘Berlin’ stands as an intricate, percussive number which feels jagged in comparison to the funky, smooth-moving ‘Baby Sucks’.
Throughout, ‘United Crushers’ teases with an array of complex stick-work and trickling synths. Everything suggests that Poliça have finally drawn straws and found something to stick with - and they definitely haven’t picked the shortest.
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