POW!

Built around sharp-angled guitar textures, driving beats, and layers of swirling synth lines, the San Francisco outfit POW! fuse the edgy pulse of new wave with the more melodic edges of post-punk. Their catalog on Castle Face Records traces an arc that begins with the eccentric and experimental Hi-Tech Boom before moving toward greater clarity and immediacy, only to veer back toward the experimental fringe with 2019’s Shift.

The group came together in 2011 after guitarist and vocalist Byron Blum recruited recent acquaintances Melissa Blue and Matt Harrison. With neither player particularly experienced on their respective instruments—drums for Blue and synth for Harrison—the trio developed a lean, unadorned attack reminiscent of a bargain-bin Devo or a more agitated Units. Following local performances, they issued the 2011 single “Pretend There” via Afterlife Records. Continued gigging and rehearsal led to an introduction from John Dwyer, founder of Castle Face Records and frontman of Thee Oh Sees, who invited them to record. The resulting lo-fi, high-intensity Hi-Tech Boom appeared in early 2014, by which point Harrison had departed and Aaron Diko had taken over on synth. That same year the band released another single, “One Eyed Scorpion,” on Glazer Records and welcomed drummer Seth Sutton, formerly of Useless Eaters alongside Blum, freeing Blue to double on synthesizer with Diko. After extensive touring they entered the studio with producer Chris Woodhouse, emerging with the noticeably more polished and streamlined Fight Fire, issued by Castle Face in early 2015.

By the time of their subsequent album, again tracked with Woodhouse, Sutton had exited and Justin Sullivan had joined on drums. The resulting Crack an Egg refined the previous record’s sheen even further and appeared in early 2017, still on Castle Face. Their next effort, Shift, was helmed by Thomas Dolas of Thee Oh Sees and Mr. Elevator & the Brain Hotel and featured drumming from Cameron Allen of Froth, though Diko was no longer in the lineup. On this release the band deliberately moved away from recent pop-leaning tendencies toward a harsher, more confrontational stance.