An arch, ironic experiment that never bothers to approach listenability, Poptastic might seem more relevant or purposeful if pop music wasn’t already being deconstructed by people who knew how to make it both intellectually interesting and legitimately catchy, pleasing music (Animal Collective, say, or Girl Talk) — or, you know, John Cage hadn’t recorded “4’33” 50-some years ago.
As is, though, this collaboration between producers Chris Fitzpatrick and Thomas Dimuzio and a cadre of sexy girls just feels more like pissing on the party, and a particularly easy party to piss on, too: they make noise about taking on the manufactured pop star/group, which they do, I guess, but in no more clever or trenchant a way than has been going on for at least a decade now. Poptastic got beat to their idea by people who do it in a far more interesting way: The Teen-Pop-Noise Virus is the pop equivalent of espousing Lamarckian evolution after the discovery of genetics, a maybe-worthwhile diversion made redundant by its tardiness.