Poppy & The Jezebels – “Sign In, Dream On, Drop Out” (video)

Bloody hell! Either the news that Daniel Miller is playing synths on this just made my laptop crash in climax, or Richard X was midi’ing via the espresso machine when he remixed this one. Either way, mid-paced is not a word to be bandied around this skew on Poppy & the Jezebels’ new single.

Out a week ahead of the official single release, this, the “Richard X Meets Larry Least Remix” of the first new music from Poppy & the Jezebels in too long, is a belter. Somewhere between Suicide on happy pills and some ADHT kid dunking ringtones in Red Bull, “Sign In, Dream On, Drop Out” is just the kind of pop joy thing we need on Mondays.

If you’re at work, I suggest you unplug your headphones, crank up the speakers and do the office a favor. If you’re on a train, flick back to 0:00 and get angular beneath those headphones busting a public move. Or if you’re at home, well, hit rewind, turn amps to max and go jump up and down on a bed – because this is the sound of life arrived with extra smiles.

Quite how X and the girls managed to reanimate the Normal for extra synths (The Normal being Daniel Miller; aka Mr Mute, aka, you know, the Normal — he of Ballardian synth classic “Warm Leatherette”) I don’t know. But, Miller picked the right time to break cover — because “Sign In, Dream On, Drop Out” is a pop gem. Short, sweet like a sugar-rush, and complete with message, this — complete with its oh-so-timely, just-a-little-sarky sample of Margaret Thatcher at the 2:15 mark — is the kind of sonics we need more of right now.

I’m due to interview Poppy & the Jezebels in a couple days, for publication here on PopMatters next week, so if you want to know more about where this lot have been for the last couple of years — let alone how they got Daniel Miller back into the studio — then keep a look out.

In the meantime, all together now: “See the broken glass… in the underpass.”