Sacha Mullin might make pop records, but it is pop that comes from a much more discerning place than most of the competition. After exploring a more art-rock sound on previous albums, Social Touch shows him bringing the same sophistication and artistic sense of adventure to pop, though having written the p-word, it already feels too small a word to describe what he does here.
‘Joy,’ which opens up the album, might have pop’s light touch, but it also has a soulful sweetness, woven from a spacious array of deft guitar licks and funksome bass lines, Mullin’s impressive vocals and a whole lot of space that allows all manner of other sounds to bubble to the surface, not least some gorgeous choral arrays and neo-classical string urgency.
‘Hypocentre’ was a recent single, and even though it is perhaps easily labelled pop, all groove and dancefloor deliciousness, again, the song delivers more than you would need to fulfil such a brief – spoken-word deliveries, synth cinematics, dancefloor infectiousness and tumbling beats. Poised and perfect pop, indeed.
‘Bed All Day’ toys with feelings of love and longing and lust; the title track is chamber-pop for the modern age, ‘Odd Radio Circle’ is a beguiling blend of hushed ambience that slow-burns its way into filmic grandeur before going out in a blaze of glory and ‘Tall Ask’, the second of two bonus tracks, ends things in a slightly angular, slightly post-punk take on early synth pop, while feeling nothing if not the sound of the future…well, one possible future at least.
As I alluded to earlier, if you just wanted to make pop music, you could have done a decent job with a fraction of the effort. The textures are woven more beguilingly than the need to be, the beats are more adventurous than merely dance-inducing (though they are that too), and the music, more than the sum of its parts, has more added value and is more genre-hopping than strictly required. And then there is Sacha Mullin’s voice, a sound that would be remarkable in any genre, sound, or style.
This isn’t pop; this is pop with a PhD.
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