Minor Works of Popular Music

“[Popular Music] successfully build sonic worlds that you can see and feel, making this a remarkably multi-sensory record.”

The Quietus

“Popular Music makes a pretty good case that in all its brilliant pointlessness a song can still, in whatever tiny way, change the world.”

For The Rabbits, UK

“If you get the chance go see Popular Music – they’ll squeeze your heart and then they’ll set fire to it”

Rocksteady Records

Popular Music is proud to present Minor Works — a new album for the end of time — to be released October 13, 2023 via the group’s own Sanitarium Sound Services imprint.

Written and produced by the Hollywood/Melbourne-based duo of Zac Pennington (former leader of American cult act Parenthetical Girls) and composer Prudence Rees-Lee, Minor Works marks the group’s debut collection of original material, and the first Pennington-penned release in a decade.

An 11-part song cycle set in apocalyptic contemporary Los Angeles, the hyper-cinematic songs of Minor Works embrace Armageddon in its myriad forms: literal, personal, existential, eschatological. The album’s novelistic, semi-autobiographical narrative concerns a cast of exiles at the end of the world — a loose tapestry of doomsday cultists, missing persons, grieving mothers and other lost causes. This is the rapture without redemption; a palm-lined purgatory where “No prayers were ever answered/No untold loves confessed/No consciences forgiven/No consequences left.”

Recording across three continents, Minor Works’ ambitious productions were pieced together in sessions between Los Angeles, Melbourne, Moscow and New York — with percussion programming by Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier, contributions from celebrated composer Jherek Bischoff (Angel Olsen, Xiu Xiu, Neil Gaiman), plus a 17-piece Russian chamber orchestra conducted over Zoom (no, really).

Photos by Darren Sylvester

~ Dramatis Personae ~

Jherek Bischoff……………….Guitars, Contrabass, Atmosphere
Juliette Pearl Davis…………..………………………………..Flutes
Diego Gaeta…………………………………………………..Piano
Selene Messinis……………..…………………………………Piano
Opensound Orchestra………………………….……………Strings
Greg Saunier………………………………..Rhythm Programming
Lehmann B Smith………………………….…….Guitars, Mandolin
Claire Strasser…………………………………………Saxophones
Mixed by Nao Anzai
Mastered by Jherek Bischoff
Vocal engineering by Jill Farrar
Additional engineering by Rohan Sforcina