After last year’s Stump Soup cassette, Powerplant is back with a sharp five tracker. On every release Powerplant mutates, changes and rotates their sound and on this EP it’s no different. The rigid march of drum machines is now more determined and powerful than ever. Grass serves as their fatalist manifesto against burning daylight spending time fruitlessly. Like an intrusive thought or a ghost, the theme of time passing, barges into every song, calling to action. Powerplant, like a converted believer, is here to guide you through.“It gets worse before it gets worse”, says bandleader Theo Zhykharyev, “I waited forever for things to get better and a perfect time to put out these songs, but judging from the trajectory of events - this is as good as it’s going to get.” With the same necessity to get out and make up for lost time, the EP opens its gates with title track “Grass” - a force of nature that charges into a dizzying riff, bridging into a crooning verse with a pompous backing. Powerplant’s catchy sensibilities and affection for intricate song structures is at the forefront with a hint of weirdness that is yet to come. "Broodmother" is like the march of an evil and twisted army with military drums, distorted bass hook and sinister vocals. "Walk Around - Hang My Head" comes over like a mid 80’s 4 track Stranglers demo with a vocal that chops and snarls with an odd twang to it. "3 Medallions" is a brief instrumental interlude that leads into final cut "Beautiful Boy" which is the most straightforward song - but isn’t straight forward at all. It starts like it’s going to be an 80’s synth pop gem but ends up like a ghostly version of early Wire or art punks that make every second count with some different happening, knowing that this might be their only ever release. Luckily, for us that isn’t the case for Powerplant.Our take: London’s Powerplant were eclectic and interesting from the drop, but their last release, 2022’s Stump Soup—an hour-long dungeon synth foray meant to soundtrack a Dungeons and Dragons module the group designed—proved the best approach to any new Powerplant record is to expect the unexpected. While Grass isn’t as out there as Stump Soup, the group remains eclectic and progressive here, returning to a more familiar synth-punk sound, but from moment to moment being as forward-thinking, exciting, and confounding as they’ve ever been. Grass is difficult to describe because it doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard before, despite working with a familiar palette of guitar / bass / drums / synth / vocals. Much of that is because of the songwriting and arrangement; rather than traditional, repetitive pop arrangements, these tracks sound like they’re built on a shifting foundation, and even when a musical motif repeats, something above or below it has always shifted, casting it in a different light. That sense of instability is apparent not just from part to part, but from track to track as well, as the way the instruments fit together and harmonize with one another floats in unexpected directions, never changing dramatically, but shifting in ways that keep my ear interested, even if I’m often left wondering how we got from point A to point B. But while Powerplant’s music on Grass always sounds unfamiliar and novel, it’s still packed with appealing melodies, textures, and rhythms… they never seem self-consciously experimental, just stylistically nomadic. Grass feels like a puzzle, one I may never figure out, but that I’ll enjoy tinkering with forever.
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