GUEST COLUMN: Skip Dwight – ElemenoP – Love & Disrespect (2003)

ElemenoP – Love & Disrespect (2003)

Ok. The time has come for me to admit something. This has been weighing on me for years. It’ll be hard for some of you to hear and will probably make you think differently of me…..hell, some of you will probably stop speaking to me.  Anyway, here goes…..
……my name is Skip and I like Pop-punk.
Oh man, that’s so liberating, I finally said it!!

All jokes aside though, I do like Pop-punk and yeah, I’m not really in the target market age range but neither was the Kiwi band I’m gonna tell you about either and they started releasing multi-platinum albums while in their 30s (gasp!!!).

ElemenoP appeared seemingly out of nowhere […] the band soon became household favourites across the nation, releasing a trifecta of top-tier albums in the space of six years.
[Audioculture]

Rewind back to 2003 and I was about to relocate to New Zealand after ten years of living and working in Wales. I was returning with mixed feelings as I’d been away for long enough that I felt a bit like a foreigner in my home country!

That changed pretty quickly when I rediscovered how individual the Kiwi music scene is, mainly operating outside of any sort of global scene, almost exclusively relying on domestic sales.
ElemenoP is a perfect representation of this, a band that for a short time was HUGE in New Zealand but pretty well ignored elsewhere.

In 2003 Pop-punk felt like it was losing a bit of momentum. The bands I’d enjoyed in my 20’s had evolved and I felt like I was aging out of the genre (I was 33!). Then as soon as I move back to NZ a new band called ElemenoP release their debut album ‘Love & Disrespect’ and I’ll tell you what (Hank Hill voice) it was amazing!

It was packed full of short, catchy songs complimented by the usual pop-punk lyrical fodder.
Relationships, check.
Slacking off at work, check.
Wanting to be famous, check.
Smoking weed, check.
Additionally, there were some deep-cut classical music and literary references too (Shostakovich and Shakespeare anyone?).

And the music! Man, that was killer! Twelve earworms that were a brilliant mash-up of pop-punk and power-pop riffs.

The best part about this ‘new’ band was seeing them in their videos and realising that they must be a similar age to me! They weren’t teenagers, they were (mostly) in their 30s….finally, a band that made it cool to love pop-punk regardless of your age.

Now I know you’ll give me a million examples of older pop-punk bands, but most of them would have started young and just kept going. ElemenoP were veterans of other bands and decided to release a pop-punk/power-pop album at a time when that genre was on the wane.

Why did they do it? Because the songs were catchy as sh*t!

Who cares how old you are? If you like a band, song, or genre then that’s great. If you’re in your 70’s and want to start a pop-punk band then that’s ace, more power to your elbow (you’ll probably need it, and some Deep Heat).

Discovering ElemenoP did a couple of things for me.

Firstly, it helped smooth my return to New Zealand. This was a band that dominated the airwaves during my first six months back home and I couldn’t be happier. They were an undiscovered gem that I could share with friends back in the UK.

And secondly, ElemenoP made me realise that it’s ok to play catchy punk rock in a band regardless of your age….and kids, that’s the most important lesson of all!

P.S. I should recommend some choice cuts from the album but I won’t, all twelve songs are great and stand up to repeated listens. Give the album a couple of spins and I guarantee the songs will stick in your head!

P.P.S. I was lucky enough to see ElemenoP live at a NYE warehouse concert in Napier, NZ in 2003 with The Feelers (more on them in a future column) and I genuinely thought my brain was going to melt out of my ears with excitement.

P.P.P.S I did actually see them live at the Islington Academy with Stereogram and Deja Voodoo (more on them another time!) in 2005 (?). Sadly though, the band just didn’t engage with audiences outside of NZ. Still, their debut hit the top of the charts and went 3 x platinum at home.