Torches
Yes 'Pumped Up Kicks' (often mistakenly referred
to as 'Pumped Up Kids') is the ubiquitous song for Summer 2011,
but what the heck are these guys talking about? Is this a subtle
nod to the battle between Nike Airs and Reebok Pumps back in
the day? Or is this just something that sounded vaguely anthemtic
to stick over their electronica backbeats? And what's the rest
of the album like? Well, it starts off very disco dancey and
not completely unlike a kind of gayer version of Miike
Snow's 'Animal.' In fact, I'm not certain if that's a man
or woman singing in that first song. I'm gonna assume it's a
dude, as he seems to sing on the rest of the album and has a
pretty high voice. This really isn't my genre of music typically,
so it's tough to draw comparisons, but to my untrained ear they
sound like a mix of Justin
Timberlake and Jamiruqui. Ok, totally not. I don't really
know how to describe this music other than to say it sounds
like what I imagine a hipster drag show would sound like if
there were such a thing. It's very dancey and upbeat and has
lots of sampler action going on and a singer who sounds vaguely
like someone ran any popular mid-tempo rock band lead singer's
voice through a pitch shifter and added lots of hand claps.
This is some serious, serious pop music, but certainly more
on the "hey the kids in Brooklyn might dig this" kind of way than "hey this nine-year-old girl in Des Moines might sing it into her hairbrush" type stuff.
There's no denying its catchiness, and it's clearly music that
would be extremely attractive to a certain demo -- but that demo
is not, and never has been me. Buy this for your 16-year-old
niece and watch her eyes bug out of her head with joy.
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