Stream: Polyplastic, ‘You’re Going to Heaven’ and ‘I See a Dip’

Kevin Bronson on March 23rd, 2022

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The title of Polyplastic’s debut album, “Medium Complications,” suggests a duality, or at least a balancing act. Are the L.A. rockers brooding or dreaming? Are they doomsayers or yeasayers? Should I wear black or pastels? Will I be too busy dancing to care?

Whichever. The band — L.A. natives Charlie Ellis and Emily Ibarra along with guitarist-producer Dylan Bostick — imbue their music, humming at the intersection of new wave and post-punk, with a certain romance and theatricality. Any number of baritoned hitmakers with English accents from the 1980s come to mind, and it’s not a stretch to think Polyplastic could have ridden the wave of the so-called “new rock revolution” in the 2000s. They check in with the less angular of those bands but match their feel for the dramatic.

Their latest single, the first of 2022 and the album opener, is “You’re Going to Heaven,” churning like a synth-powered hope machine, with Ibarra’s vocals soaring in the background. “I See a Dip,” released late last year, has a similarly sweeping chorus: “Don’t say yes / Don’t say no / Don’t be happy / growing old.”

Things get less AOR-friendly — even “complicated,” if you will — elsewhere on the album as the band delves into experimental, industrial and noise pop. Polyplastic know where the edges are, and they’d like to have you for a dance there.

“Medium Complications” is out April 1, with a release show the following weekend.

||| Stream: “You’re Going to Heaven”