Poliça
United Crushers
MOM + POP
6/10
On their third full-length album, Minneapolis group Poliça pioneers a new genre of dissociative pop. United Crushers presents its listeners with an all-encompassing wall of sound that makes the outside world fade away. With syncopated rhythms and unique instrumentation and layering, the band manipulates time and texture to create a new reality—one that’s dark, serious, and deeply political.
Partially a response to police brutality in the group’s hometown, the record is an engulfing musical rendering of institutional failures and the tragedy that ensues. Poliça uses their mastery of production to build an entire world up in front of its listeners. But playing with the idea of tension and release, they’re sure to tear that world down at times too. Though overwhelmingly bleak, the record also manages to be dancey at times without ever trivializing itself. At its best, United Crushers demonstrates Poliça’s ability to capture the complexities of experience and recreate them in strange and surprising ways.
