The face of pop music has been anything but constant over the years. From the girl-group pop of The Supremes to the synth pop of The Human League, the genre has always been adaptable to current trends and sensibilities.
Even so, pop musicians, regardless of the time period, have tended to write songs without a lot of backbone, favoring cheery love songs laden with harmonies and almost childish imagery over songs concerned with war, death and poverty. Pop songwriters tend toward the girlie rather than the burly, and that’s why Melbourne, Australia’s Muscles, his moniker being suggestive as it is, will surprise many listeners in search of simple pop with his full-length debut, “Guns Babes Lemonade.”
This is by no means a straight pop record, but it is a pop record nonetheless and quite a good one at that. Muscles has the harmonies, the oohs and ahhs, and the tendency toward lyrics that are fun just for fun’s sake (“Ice cream is going to save the day again!”)

But for every quality Muscles has in common with all the pop artists who came before him, there’s something else that sets him apart. Muscles harmonizes with himself, all sung in his atypically raucous singing voice. And that bit about ice cream saving the day? It comes just after he supposes he might be stabbed and left bleeding on the ground.
Add to these apparent contradictions the fact that the album sounds tailor-made for the dance floor, and you’ve got one tricky pop musician on your hands.
Still, the album is all about fun, with lyrics about drinking lemonade in hammocks and dancing to ringtones in the street, and plenty of thump to make a club DJ’s set list. Muscles successfully fuses pop traditions with current electro style, and creates an album that’ll have you grinning wide under the black lights.
Highlights include the dancey, handclap-filled “Ice Cream,” the ultra-bright “Jerk” and the slow-driving “Futurekidz,” a personal favorite. This is worth listening to end to end; if you don’t like everything, you are still sure to find a couple tracks that keep your interest.
But “Guns Babes Lemonade” is not all pop perfection. The track list doesn’t deviate from a loud, cheery mood, sometimes making the transitions between songs almost imperceptible. Muscles’ voice, while unique, isn’t exactly silky smooth, and after giving the album a full listen it may begin to grate on the listener’s nerves. As singles, the entire track list would be a delight. In album form they are less thrilling.
Still, Muscles has created an album that fits into a broader definition of pop music without recycling all the same pop elements artists have used for the past 50 years. Pop fans who can get down with a few dirty synths, as well as fans of electronic dance music, should not pass on this one.