You have have heard this week that The Morning Benders have changed their name to POP ETC. The USA band finally found out that “benders” doesn’t exactly have positive connotations in Europe and to their credit, after seven years as a band, they have changed their name (full statement).
The real story here is that the band who made the lush indie 2010 album Big Echo have also changed into a new band, a pop monster obsessed by bigger more ambitious sounding songs that they had previously yearned for.
This POP ETC mixtape they dropped as a celebration of the name change does not consist of tracks they like at the moment like I first assumed but it is a statement of intent, a showcase of the band’s new broad pop sound (and some dodgy autotune admittedly). The old Morning Benders came close to writing a song as infectious as ‘Everything Is Gone’ but the transformation has enabled them to fully embrace a new sound. The Big Echo followup is now a thoroughly exciting prospect. Download it in full at popetcetera.com.
