Indiepop, which is different from just indie that is pop, is one of the most insular genres on Earth. It's so insular that its fans just call it "pop," as if the word weren't already taken by the stuff on the Billboard charts.

Let me explain. The whole story started with punk, which wanted to fill itself with urgency and anger and Big Themes. Somewhere in the middle of that came one of the first "indiepop" singles: the Television Personalities' "Part-Time Punks", which consisted of three dorky kids playing a half-assed, cutesy singalong about the punks on the street. It was an embrace of punk's DIY ethics, but also a big "fuck off" to punk's poses: a cute little pop song existing in (and analyzing) a scene that had very little use for such things. This became the core idea of indiepop: In environments where everyone desperately wanted to show strength and style and importance, these bands thumbed their noses and thought hard about kittens. Beat Happening, for instance, appeared on a west-coast indie scene still preoccupied with hardcore, but they sang childlike songs about apple-picking and death while throwing candy to their audiences. Henry Rollins heckled them, and they probably threw him candy, too: What kind of idiot is too cool to like candy?

Following this stuff is a little like following pop, only in a tiny room that no one ever bothers with: It's all about "legendary" bands that only released one single, big pop-idol crushes on the women from Heavenly, endless mixtapes and little social scenes. So long as no one is watching, the fans can trade seven-inches in peace, in a realm that runs solely on their own enthusiasm: The whole thing is like a grand experiment in the "indie" idea of how bands should relate to listeners. But this is exactly what's led the genre to the depths of self-parody it currently wallows in: When everyone's happy to party in the same closet, no one bothers with quality control. At this late date most of the bands are just being cute for its own sake, writing still more songs about having crushes on one another, or deciding, to all appearances, that writing decent songs is no longer even necessary. Many have forgotten the key thing their precursors knew: That pop can be catchy but still serious, pissy, even sinister.

And then there's Boyracer. In this little indiepop world, Boyracer is an institution-- maybe not The Beatles, but The Kinks, at least. Stewart Anderson, the group's only permanent member, has buzzed and shambled his way across more than a decade so far, releasing precious few full-lengths but a daunting array of singles, EPs, compilation tracks, and collections, all against a constantly mutating backdrop of band members and solo projects. This is the "legendary" Stewart Boyracer-- one friendly English guy with a mangled guitar and a revolving-door band spilling forth scattershot strings of bashed-out lo-fi pop songs. Indie rock fans might think that sounds like someone familiar, and it should: Bob Pollard and Guided by Voices have been travelling this road for just as long.

The differences, though, are all content. Guided by Voices create a world of dirty-haired guys drinking cheap beer, of "serious" rock tropes, of obtuse, impressionistic lyrics. Boyracer's world is less skeptical: Just boys and girls excitedly bashing out the sort of pop that makes you bounce, the sort where clever knife-sharp lyrics about the everyday world of that latest crush will always beat vague stuff about blimps and robots. And that's exactly what you get here: twenty-odd tracks of speedy bopalong pop songs, all reckless and lo-fi, covered in noise and rigged together with duct tape. You get people attacking drum sets like eager kids; you get Stewart strumming guitars unbelievably fast; you get him and bandmate Jen calling "Tell me where my hands should go!" in enthusiastic unison right before overfuzzy bass and handclaps roll in. You get wistful bedroom duets that end with the sound of a teakettle coming to boil; you get an answering machine message in which an irate record-pressing rep tries unconvincingly to sound threatening and calls Stewart a bitch; you get ridiculously lovely covers of pop landmarks The Primitives and The Marine Girls.

You get, in essence, what so much of indiepop has forgotten: That the point isn't just to be sweet and congratulate yourself for it, but to make sweetness powerful, to make it say something. Stewart understands this. He understands simpler issues, too, like how to write good songs (the hooks and structures here are consistently devastating), and how to just plain rock (or rather "pop": this album reminds me why The Wedding Present were once considered part of this genre). But mostly he gets how this stuff can work, how he can sit behind drum sets and guitars and have fun with you, or how he can set up a four-track somewhere and offer you a picturesque slice of the life he happens to lead: "Are you still defending him?" he begins one song. "Is he still ruining your art-rock band?"

Wipe away all those pretensions to being "avant-garde" and it's the entire concept of "indie" in one album. Plus about a million great hooks. Indiepop is insular, yeah, but if there's any album in the genre right now that can toss that aside and offer something to people who couldn't care less about Tiger Trap, this is it.

-Nitsuh Abebe, February 19th, 2003