Paradise Rock Club Gets Retro With Freezepop

The Paradise Rock Club, best known as of late for showcasing up-and-coming rock acts such as Pete Yorn, Jimmy Eat World and Jack Johnson, entered a different dimension of space and time this past Saturday: the 1980s. As I found myself in the throes of the new wave revolution, I could not stop laughing. Maybe it was because I was watching a band that actually calls itself Freezepop, maybe it was because a drunken Tom Petty-like character in a Hawaiian shirt and John Lennon granny glasses was attempting to break dance through the crowd, or maybe it was because the waves of synth-pop reverberating around the front room of the Paradise was just so damn danceable — I suspect it was a twisted combination of the three.

Freezepop, a trio with obvious roots in Depeche Mode and the Human League, formed in Boston during the summer of 1999. They began touring in the spring of 2000 and have already released a full-length CD, which received mixed reviews. The occasion for Saturday’s midnight performance was the release of their third EP, Fashion Impression Function — which includes such unforgettable tracks as “Shark Attack” and “Robotron 2002” (“he wants me in that special way / and whispers in his robot voice”).

The band was definitely in its element as they played to the moderately animated crowd. Liz Enthusiasm, the subdued lead singer — a petite, doe-eyed songstress in leopard print — breathily delivered a full set that included all the songs off the new EP, as well as a wide range of old material and covers. At times, she handed the mike over to the Duke of Candied Apples, and he added his own monotonic flavor to the vocals —in the hilarious song “Tracey Gold,” he seduced the former Carol Seaver (“Tracey Gold — my heart’s in a whirl over you / Tracey Gold — my brain’s in a swirl over you”). The Duke’s main responsibility, however, is to operate the coolest piece of musical technology I have ever seen: the Yamaha QY-70, described on the band’s website as a “portable handheld battery-powered sequencer.” It resembled a classic Nintendo-controller, and the sounds it emitted were not far off. As the high school kid next to me remarked between his bouts of head-bobbing and moon-walking, “this sounds like video game music.”

The effect was further enhanced by the musical stylings of Sean T. Drinkwater, the main synthesizer player. Sporting a Flock of Seagulls rip-off hairstyle, Drinkwater kept the base and drum synth pumping and even added his own Transformer-inspired comments between songs. Taken together and highlighted by the pulsing neon lights and swallowing volume, the three band members produced an effect that was wholly unique and uber-trippy.

Perhaps the most memorable moment of the set was during “Summer Boy” (a song described by Enthusiasm as “extremely silly”) when the Duke implored the members of Lifestyle to retrieve a case of freeze-pops from the dressing room freezer, which the band members and audience members distributed throughout the crowd. As the happy sounds of artificial music bounc around the lively room, the smorgasbord crowd, bathed in artificial light, sucked and sipped their artificial frozen treats —bound together, if only briefly, by the guilty pleasures of the non-music that surrounded them.

I am not going to whole-heartedly convert from my classic rock religion to new wave worship, leaving Dylan, Clapton, and Bono for the likes of Thomas Dolby and The Fixx, as a result of Saturday night. Yet, I think that music can be fun, and that most artists today can afford to take themselves a little less seriously. And that is why some people will always covet Converse All-Stars, the “Brat Pack,” Atari and the lighthearted attitude of the 1980s and why, as Freezepop’s shameless musical propaganda suggests, “Fre-squared-zepop — Freezepop forever / Freezepop will last forever and forever…”