One person’s summer hit is another person’s last summer’s hit…
[Video][Website]
[5.80]
Ian Mathers: They have a horrible band name. If you try and listen to the lyrics, they’re a pretty dire and weirdly lightweight Columbine narrative. If you watch the video, the band seems pretty annoying. I strongly suspect that I will never like any of their other songs even a little. If this reminds me of anyone else it’s Broken Social Scene when Broken Social Scene is being especially annoying. And this is getting played everywhere right now, and few things feel more like summer this year than driving around in the afternoon with the chorus of “Pumped Up Kicks” looping out of the radio. I adore it to distraction, which outweighs all the other shit.
[10]
Kat Stevens: This would have fitted right in on the Xfm playlist in 1999, during the post-Travis indie drought when Gus Gus was the most exciting thing on offer to these ears. Mid-paced sing-song from under the sink! RUSH IT TO ME IMMEDIATELY. Not for the first time have I thanked fuck for the arrival of Britney Spears.
[6]
Jonathan Bogart: I know I don’t keep my ear to the indie ground like I used to, but I could swear this sounds exactly like 2005. Is this the first wave of Bush-era nostalgia beginning to crest and bury us all?
[6]
Alex Ostroff: I’ve had this song floating around my hard drive since last summer, and it sounds like it was meticulously focus-grouped to appeal to my (20something, indie-ish, urban hipster) demographic. Washed out sonics, vocals pleasantly unassertive, mumbled through a processor and buried in the mix, vague lyrics (that are apparently about gun violence among disaffected youth), whistling. Normally, I would resent this sort of thing, but God save me, I can’t help myself. It floats insubstantially in the back of my mind on loop, plays on repeat in my headphones in the summer sun, evaporating in the heat until I think I’ve finally forgotten it — at which point it comes back in full force. Or at least, it did last summer. In 2011, its hold on me has weakened. Still, it’s the song of a summer, even if it isn’t the song of my summer. Hearing it emerge from friends’ cars, windows and house party sound systems, the sense of nostalgia ‘Pumped Up Kicks’ tries so hard to evoke finally sounds genuine.
[8]
Jer Fairall: In which Peter Bjorn and John’s “Young Folks” states its case as the most noxious musical influence of the 21st century.
[3]
Edward Okulicz: This is the American “Young Folks”. All the pieces are there: the sleepy sounds, the whistled hook, and further, it was a moderately enjoyable radio hit when you heard it occasionally, but repeated exposure — especially as it’s now a bona fide mainstream pop hit — hasn’t been kind to its charms. Six months ago, it would have been a [7] but now it’s just too mumbly, too faint, too ignorable.
[5]
Michaela Drapes: I wouldn’t normally do this, but the fact that these kids are a bunch of slick appropriation artists has forced my hand. Here’s a list of things this song rips off: “Jeremy”, “Young Folks”, Beck, Soul Coughing, that Cake song in the iTunes commercials, the Beta Band song in High Fidelity, Ezra Koenig’s delivery, the bassline from Duffy’s “Mercy” … I mean, it’s not even a coherent collection of things to steal from! Perhaps some day we’ll look back on this and laugh, and remember it as the doom anthem of of all the forgotten Hype Machine bands.
[0]
Hazel Robinson: I shouldn’t really like this but I’m a sucker for a creeping bassline and the restless feet-itchiness of that agitated synth over the top let it get away with sounding like a slowed-down version of the Caesars. And it’s got a clap breakdown — you can’t really hate on that.
[8]
Renato Pagnani: Never has a murderous shooting spree sounded so funky, and rarely has wisp sounded so substantial. The verses are almost rendered useless by their lazy megaphone delivery (although they do mimic the sun-soaked lethargy of sizzling July afternoons nicely), but the walking-the-dog bassline and massive stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth-sweet chorus more than make up for this.
[7]
Jonathan Bradley: I’ve gone through so many rejected idea for this blurb, including puns about Peter Bjorn and Jindie and a conclusion that it’s music for shopping at Urban Outfitters to. (The problem with the latter is that I like shopping at Urban Outfitters.) All of those approaches show a glib disregard for the song’s audience though, and it would be wrong of me to do that simply because I imagine they’re people who think themselves fashionable. Use my stalling as an indication of how cautious and uneventful “Pumped Up Kicks” is. The internet tells me the band is from Los Angeles, and I suspect on a sunny Californian day with little to do, the melodic bass line and telephone vocal would be quite suitable to be used as background noise. Possibly in an Urban Outfitters.
[5]