Pop Levi
The Return To Form Black Majick Party
Release Date: Feb 20, 2007
Genre(s): Indie, Rock
Record label: Counter
Music Critic Score
How the Music Critic Score works
Album Review: The Return To Form Black Majick Party by Pop Levi
Fairly Good, Based on 2 Critics
Based on rating 3/5
One-time bassist with Ladytron, Jonathan Pop Levi turns one-man-band for this debut, a trip through what he calls his "astral rock'n'roll". A multi-instrumentalist, Pop Levi has a talent for fusing genres, as he showed with the jazzy collective Super Numeri. Here, he mixes Dylanesque folk with glam stomps and Prince-inspired funk with garage rock. Beguiling and bizarre in equal measures, Sugar Assault Me Now sounds like Marc Bolan being beaten up by the Hair Bear Bunch.
Opinion: Great
From the first pounding slap-backs and compressed vocals – tight as nut-hugging 514s on a glam fag – it's easy to forgive critics exalting 21st century boy and ex-Ladytroner Levi as Marc Bolan reincarnate. His hindsight fishnet drags up as much Norman Greenbaum and David Essex as T. Rex. Similarly, the loose bass fwap on "Blue Honey" may scrape like balls on a basset hound, but it's equal parts "Fly Like an Eagle" and "Hoochie Coochie Man." These aren't bad things.