Pom Poko release their debut album, Birthday, via Bella Union. Between the quartet’s sweetly punky melodies and disco-fried art-rock eruptions, a spirit of free-firing, balls-out individuality courses through this exhilarating debut. The band’s own bad-ass-ery is writ large on album opener Theme1, which locates a sweet spot between Deerhoof and Battles as singer Ragnhild issues loud, clear rebel yells over Martin’s math-rock guitar. Singles My Blood and Follow The Lights layer seductively sweet melodies over squalls of sound, while the funk-fired My Work Is Full of Art offers a kind of mission statement: “I’ll just let freaky surround me,” sings Fangel. Elsewhere, Pom Poko’s instinctive dynamism teases uplifting thrills from boundary-melting experiments. Glacial shards of guitar bounce off steel-drum flurries on the rapid-fire serotonin fix of Blue, before the sweetly infatuated Honey comes sequenced next to the thrashing tonal lurches of Crazy Energy Night. The sing-song title-track spikes the ranks of sweetly sad birthday songs with a rebellious sting (“I’m not your bitch!”), while Daytripper is a commanding come-on from a band who are no more likely to mince their words than limit their range. If U Want Me 2 Stay resembles The Tra La La Song retooled as a sci-fi cyber-pop anthem of carefree defiance, while Peachy closes the album with an exultant melody and one last declaration of transformative independence: “Watch me as I shape shift.
