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Monday, January 3, 2011
Shit Talk / Video / Zzzzzzzzzzzzz Annoying Youtube Indie Fuxxors/Car Shills Also Evangelical Christians?!
Posted by Eric Grandy on Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 1:06 PM
Perhaps you are familiar with this sliver of awful from Youtube LOLtwee duo Pomplamoose:
Apparently it's in heavy rotation during the "footy" games on the TV lately, even after xmas, and every critic who has ever said a kind word about ukulele covers of popular songs on Youtube is partly to blame (sorry, Paul).
Anyway...a poster on ILM has this morning has dredged up a link to what appears to be Pomplamoose singer Nataly Dawn Knudsen's awesome evangelical family ministry ("PLANT A CHURCH - HARVEST A NATION"). Just so you know where your corny, post-Juno "indie" shill/Youtube partner money is going. (NOTE: You should still despise this shit primarily on its musical/aesthetic merits or lackthereof, even though capitalism and evangelical christianity are both totally lame.)
3
I fucking hate those commercials so so so much. The dude is especially annoying, with his uber-lard hipster in a car ad mugging. I wonder what the strategy of that ad is--is it like "oh square people will be charmed by this irreverent duo and consider a hyundai" or is it supposed to make people like me enraged and then have that fade away and then when I'm looking for a new car in five years something makes me go "maybe we should check out a hyundai..."
6
I hope this brings on the tweemageddon where all bearded hipsters and frumpy knitwear obsessed girls are called upon and transported to a heaven filled with accordion lessons and ironic Americana.
7
I HATE THEM SO MUCH. I would rather listen to Dennis Leary try to sell me a F850 Ford Tank ten times than see this commercial again. I am not a violent person but they make me want to drive aforementioned monster truck into the front window of Etsy.
8
PS. If nothing else, the stupid name of this band reminded me of the name of another, better music act:
Le Pamplemousse - Sweet Magic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAZz8mKz-…
Le Pamplemousse - Sweet Magic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAZz8mKz-…
9
I didn't hate it at first, but it is starting to wear thin. It is staggering how often they are running these commercials. It seemed like they ran during every commercial break of yesterday's Hawks game.
The gal definitely was raised in an evangelical family. Haven't seen anything about her current take on religion. Don't know about the dude. I'm sure they both got a steady dose of secular humanism during their college years at Stanford, though.
They did get people to donate like $60k worth of books to the Richmond, CA school district.
For me, I like them in small doses, but after listening to a youtube play list of their stuff, her vocal delivery got kind of monochromatic and does seem a bit affected. Their original material is also not as interesting as their cover songs.
Say what you will, though, they really seem like one of the first bands to truly grasp and utilize the power of the internet as a promotional tool. As entrepreneurs, they've been brilliant so far.
Of course, this whole commercial thing may undo them too, by overexposing them. Hard to put that genie back in the bottle.
I guess that's something we'll have to keep an eye on moving forward. It may just be that the internet will have more meteoric but short success stories. Not sure if that's good for the music. On the other hand, maybe it's not about good or bad. Maybe it's just about different.
The gal definitely was raised in an evangelical family. Haven't seen anything about her current take on religion. Don't know about the dude. I'm sure they both got a steady dose of secular humanism during their college years at Stanford, though.
They did get people to donate like $60k worth of books to the Richmond, CA school district.
For me, I like them in small doses, but after listening to a youtube play list of their stuff, her vocal delivery got kind of monochromatic and does seem a bit affected. Their original material is also not as interesting as their cover songs.
Say what you will, though, they really seem like one of the first bands to truly grasp and utilize the power of the internet as a promotional tool. As entrepreneurs, they've been brilliant so far.
Of course, this whole commercial thing may undo them too, by overexposing them. Hard to put that genie back in the bottle.
I guess that's something we'll have to keep an eye on moving forward. It may just be that the internet will have more meteoric but short success stories. Not sure if that's good for the music. On the other hand, maybe it's not about good or bad. Maybe it's just about different.
10
Still, not as bad as wavves/best coast shilling for Target who give $ DIRECTLY to anti-gay, anti-poor republican extremists. European evangelicalism isn't as political.
12
Precious fucks. Nailed it.
I am so glad you guys hate them as much as I do. I honestly just assumed you might not even be aware of their existence. Because "lol sprots is for meatheads."
...and evengelical cristhards? Pomplamoose: 100% confirmed for enemy of my every sensibility.
I am so glad you guys hate them as much as I do. I honestly just assumed you might not even be aware of their existence. Because "lol sprots is for meatheads."
...and evengelical cristhards? Pomplamoose: 100% confirmed for enemy of my every sensibility.
15
Yeah, just too precious for me. Makes my skin crawl. The girl is pretty cute, though.
That's all I got.
That's all I got.
16
I'm surprised at all the vitriol -- since I assumed they were some typical Minnesota indie band with girl singer and guy drummer ala everything from White Stripes to New Pornographers.
Perhaps the hatred stems from holding up a big mirror and letting the Seattlites see they are merely an featured entry in Things That White People Like.
Perhaps the hatred stems from holding up a big mirror and letting the Seattlites see they are merely an featured entry in Things That White People Like.
18
I like a lot of Pomplamoose, but not their newer stuff so much. It's kind of overproduced.
For what it's worth, that churchy website is probably about 4 years old and Nataly Dawn has since gotten a master's degree and written a few songs which seem to be questioning religion and the usefulness of faith. Plus, I think she's living in sin with that guy.
For what it's worth, that churchy website is probably about 4 years old and Nataly Dawn has since gotten a master's degree and written a few songs which seem to be questioning religion and the usefulness of faith. Plus, I think she's living in sin with that guy.
21
Why does everyone hate them? They look like everyone in Seattle except they're not wearing those cheap-ass ugly American Apparrel clothes.
24
Is it just me, or do they kind of remind me of Josh and Erica...well, back when the guy didn't have the hideous hipster facial hair...?
That said, while I agree that these commercials are becoming quite grating (and one more reason for me to continue to enjoy my Camry), a little pompamaloose (or whatever the fuck they're called) from time to time isn't that painful. *eek!*
That said, while I agree that these commercials are becoming quite grating (and one more reason for me to continue to enjoy my Camry), a little pompamaloose (or whatever the fuck they're called) from time to time isn't that painful. *eek!*
25
Eric, I love you. You nailed it, this commercial clawed its way under my skin and I felt dumb allowing it to irritate me so. But now you have legitimized me and my feelings. Mwah!
27
I'm wondering how proud some Don Draper wannabe was of himself when watched a you tube video of these guys and thought "just drop a fucking Hyundai in the middle of that shit..DONE SON!!"
28
I hate when women `sing` like that.
fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
Aggressive, loud whispering is not singing! It is not!
fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
Aggressive, loud whispering is not singing! It is not!
30
I LOVE them! I stop what I am doing when it comes on to watch.....(I am also a musician too) I appreciate their dedication and hard work to the hyundai brand....and dedication to the song creation. Gives non musicians maybe a little appreciation for the hard work involved....I think they are going to be my favorite band now too.
31
I'm a fan of them, as well. I donated a book to charity in order to download their Christmas songs.
Too bad my fandom is unpopular according to Slog...
Too bad my fandom is unpopular according to Slog...
32
..but i read somewhere that a cat named cordovan mixed and remixed this. among boatloads of other work they have a remix of caleico 'sting nettles'
http://cordovanmusic.com/
if it weren't for the commercials, i wouldn't know this..so i guess you could count me among the small few who like it..well i like the music at least.
http://cordovanmusic.com/
if it weren't for the commercials, i wouldn't know this..so i guess you could count me among the small few who like it..well i like the music at least.
36
I disagree. She's my new crush. I'd drive over him with the car, though. Neither would suffer for the interaction.
37
@14, whoever the brunetter is of Garfunkel and Oates got a small recurring role on the network sitcom "Raising Hope". They're Largo girls still I think.
38
Hey, we love that brown haired girl! We always leave the TV on after one of our two shows (is it Modern Family or Glee?) to see if she opens with a song. (I had no idea she was anything other than the quirky girl who opened Raising Hope with a song about dog sitting, or something)
Just checked out their page, they have a Twitter post that says:
" 4 days ago We both wanna smoke more pot in 2011. For real. This year was all work and sobriety."
Just checked out their page, they have a Twitter post that says:
" 4 days ago We both wanna smoke more pot in 2011. For real. This year was all work and sobriety."
39
They are the 2000's version of this band...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YcNzHOBm…
Doe eyed, woman-child singer with "indy" backdrop.
"Sensitive, new-age guy(s)".
barf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YcNzHOBm…
Doe eyed, woman-child singer with "indy" backdrop.
"Sensitive, new-age guy(s)".
barf
40
eh whatevs, still way less annoying than that fucking vampire weekend holiday song that was EVERYFUCKINWHERE - by which i mean hilfiger and honda - this season. omfgawwwd i HATE that band.
43
Excuse me but they opened for the Dresden Dolls here in San Francisco on New Year's Eve. It was incredible
http://tinyurl.com/24zcnb9
They had Great Spirit and have risen $60K for the Richmond School district library in CA. A school that never had a library will now have one .If you have an attention span beyond 30 seconds check out this at 31 or 33 seconds. It is true they are not all evil and dark.
Jumping to conclusions is the most exercise Americans get.
http://tinyurl.com/2club83
http://tinyurl.com/24zcnb9
They had Great Spirit and have risen $60K for the Richmond School district library in CA. A school that never had a library will now have one .If you have an attention span beyond 30 seconds check out this at 31 or 33 seconds. It is true they are not all evil and dark.
Jumping to conclusions is the most exercise Americans get.
http://tinyurl.com/2club83
45
I thought these commercials were the worst thing ever, and then they kind of grew on me for some reason. The ironic thing is that they might turn off the very audience they're trying to court.
48
you are all wrong.
its just music, for a commercial. and current music, well some of it sounds like this, and is played by people like that, and some of them dress like you do. The whole "what are they trying to say/who are they directing this towards" question? The answer is its 2011. This music is no longer "indie". Its music.
Since Don Draper was already brought up allow me to paraphrase him in the episode where the stoned beatniks are calling him a sellout and he destroys them with cold honesty:
"There is no 'system'."
its just music, for a commercial. and current music, well some of it sounds like this, and is played by people like that, and some of them dress like you do. The whole "what are they trying to say/who are they directing this towards" question? The answer is its 2011. This music is no longer "indie". Its music.
Since Don Draper was already brought up allow me to paraphrase him in the episode where the stoned beatniks are calling him a sellout and he destroys them with cold honesty:
"There is no 'system'."
49
We have Apple to thank for this marketing trend (e.g. the 1, 2, 3, 4... iPod commercials.) Those worked fantastically for Apple and its marketing agency.
So expect to see more cloying music that annoys you on the teevee. Or get a TiVo™.
So expect to see more cloying music that annoys you on the teevee. Or get a TiVo™.
50
I hate them too. Horribly horribly twee and bizarrely asexual. Not that they should be "sexy", they're just annoyingly cloying and simple. They completely embody that adults-who-act-like-children trend.
51
Maybe they're annoyingly "cute" and maybe it's stupid that they play Christmas music on Hyundai commercials, but these two know what they're doing and have done some cool stuff. This cover of "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" is great, for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmENgrVOw…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmENgrVOw…
52
I love how this unremarkable, contemporary pablum is being supposed as some bright light that's just laying bare all of these deep psychological flaws and insecurities in whoever dislikes them.
Haha! nope.
Haha! nope.
54
Their single ladies cover was annoying and my friends still haven't stopped posting it to facebook two years later.
@30: thank god there is a Hyundai commercial to let me know how much hard work you put into wearing headphones and looking cute.
@30: thank god there is a Hyundai commercial to let me know how much hard work you put into wearing headphones and looking cute.
55
They're both pretentious indie hipster "musicians" AND Christians? I knew my hatred was justified for them!
58
I like them. I mean, they are cute and if I have to hear shitty Christmas songs, these were the least horrible. It's those Overstockdotcom commercials that define annoying.
59
Now I'm getting nostalgic for those goold old days a decade ago when people would just argue about the merits of Low doing a xmas song in a Gap commercial.
60
I hate this commercial sooo, sooo fucking much!!!! BUT, I don't hate it as much as I hate that stupid, fucking annoying commercial that goes: "Holiday, Oh Holiday and the best one of the year..." I wish that commercial would die.
62
I didn't hate it at first, but it is starting to wear thin. It is staggering how often they are running these commercials. It seemed like they ran during every commercial break of yesterday's Hawks game.
The gal definitely was raised in an evangelical family. Haven't seen anything about her current take on religion. Don't know about the dude. I'm sure they both got a steady dose of secular humanism during their college years at Stanford, though.
They did get people to donate like $60k worth of books to the Richmond, CA school district.
For me, I like them in small doses, but after listening to a youtube play list of their stuff, her vocal delivery got kind of monochromatic and does seem a bit affected. Their original material is also not as interesting as their cover songs.
Say what you will, though, they really seem like one of the first bands to truly grasp and utilize the power of the internet as a promotional tool. As entrepreneurs, they've been brilliant so far.
Of course, this whole commercial thing may undo them too, by overexposing them. Hard to put that genie back in the bottle.
I guess that's something we'll have to keep an eye on moving forward. It may just be that the internet will have more meteoric but short success stories. Not sure if that's good for the music. On the other hand, maybe it's not about good or bad. Maybe it's just about different.
The gal definitely was raised in an evangelical family. Haven't seen anything about her current take on religion. Don't know about the dude. I'm sure they both got a steady dose of secular humanism during their college years at Stanford, though.
They did get people to donate like $60k worth of books to the Richmond, CA school district.
For me, I like them in small doses, but after listening to a youtube play list of their stuff, her vocal delivery got kind of monochromatic and does seem a bit affected. Their original material is also not as interesting as their cover songs.
Say what you will, though, they really seem like one of the first bands to truly grasp and utilize the power of the internet as a promotional tool. As entrepreneurs, they've been brilliant so far.
Of course, this whole commercial thing may undo them too, by overexposing them. Hard to put that genie back in the bottle.
I guess that's something we'll have to keep an eye on moving forward. It may just be that the internet will have more meteoric but short success stories. Not sure if that's good for the music. On the other hand, maybe it's not about good or bad. Maybe it's just about different.
63
@60: That's a bad one surely, mute was designed for that commercial, but the visuals are not nearly as infuriating as the Hyundai commercial. There should be a mute for the video... I believe it is called "off".
@50: Hit this right on the head. I anticipate another couple years of grown ass people acting like brats to be cute. Play on.
@50: Hit this right on the head. I anticipate another couple years of grown ass people acting like brats to be cute. Play on.
64
One more solid reason to avoid the fringes of the internet: personal videos, twits, faces and any other garbage that proves how inane human beings can be -- including anything about the so-called "tea party" and other right-wingers. But R-W/D-S/A-Hs have plenty of left-wing company in this area.
66
Hate on christrians all you like without knowing a thing about their personal beliefs -- but holding things against then they did four years ago when they lived with their parents? Whatever.
68
So, we should hate people because they're Christians? We should assume she's a currently active evangelizing Christian based on an old family website? We should assume we know anything about the guy's religion at all? We're going to put "musicians" in quotes when discussing two people who make every sound in their YouTube videos and who obviously can play pretty well? It sounds like a lot of y'all are judging them on image rather than on music. Pretty adolescent to base your self-image on what you hate, kids.
69
(NOTE: You should still despise this shit primarily on its musical/aesthetic merits or lackthereof, even though capitalism and evangelical christianity are both totally lame.)
The point is that there's plenty to hate here regardless of the bonus goofs provided by some old proselytizing website. This is how it works: If you make shitty art/music, then your evangelical belief in a bronze age sky god is just icing on the me-making-fun-of-you cake. If you make good art/music, I can more or less ignore whatever you believe in, whether it's jesus or something slightly more plausible, like dragons and wizards. Religion is the peripheral gag here; judging art on its own merits is still the central concern.
The point is that there's plenty to hate here regardless of the bonus goofs provided by some old proselytizing website. This is how it works: If you make shitty art/music, then your evangelical belief in a bronze age sky god is just icing on the me-making-fun-of-you cake. If you make good art/music, I can more or less ignore whatever you believe in, whether it's jesus or something slightly more plausible, like dragons and wizards. Religion is the peripheral gag here; judging art on its own merits is still the central concern.
74
Hate all you want, but the ads worked as intended: You all remember them, you remember the product being advertised, you are discussing these ads among yourselves...
75
those ads are based on electro harmonix ads like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs3pyg019….
76
I was introduced to their YouTube videos a year ago and enjoy many of them, but I cringe every time I see the Hyundai ads. Really wish they hadn't done that.
78
Y'all do realize that "bad music" is a subjective term, right? And that some of what y'all think is great music strikes other people as boring or bad or what-have-you? That it's not a "fact" that their music sucks? I personally think some of it is pretty fun, and I'm not sure why all the hate for people who make tons and tons of music, post it online, have found a way to make a living at it, etc. Reading people posting with such self-satisfaction about it being "bad music" really makes my skin crawl.
If someone makes songs that I find to be catchy (as I do some of their originals) and performs them with a sense of fun, then that seems like a generally positive thing. Maybe that's it - they seem to be having too much fun? Not humorless enough for the Slog crowd?
If someone makes songs that I find to be catchy (as I do some of their originals) and performs them with a sense of fun, then that seems like a generally positive thing. Maybe that's it - they seem to be having too much fun? Not humorless enough for the Slog crowd?
79
@77, because "float on" is a good song, and modest mouse, a real band with actual musical merit, wrote it themselves.
81
@79, can I send you my iTunes contents so you can tell me which stuff has actual musical merit and which doesn't? I'm so confused! Also, maybe you could help with weeding out all songs performed by people who didn't write them. There goes all my Sinatra.
Also, Pomplamoose have posted plenty of originals. It sounds like you're dismissing them without having listened, which isn't a shocker. (And why would an original song be used in a Christmas-themed ad, anyway? THAT'S your criticism?)
Also, Pomplamoose have posted plenty of originals. It sounds like you're dismissing them without having listened, which isn't a shocker. (And why would an original song be used in a Christmas-themed ad, anyway? THAT'S your criticism?)
83
@78, you know what's even more annoying than people casually saying things are objectively bad? The smug fucker who loves to interject with "everything's, like, subjective, man..." Everyone knows quality is subjective, people don't just go around saying "based on my experience with this thing this far, I do not like it, although everyone is entitled to their opinions." Not because they don't actually feel that way, but because they'd sound like assholes. With that in mind, I'm not surprised someone apparently defending Pomplamoose's insipid neo-twee bullshit isn't observant enough to pick up on that.
84
@83, I never said everything was subjective. I said that musical taste is. And someone posting about one musical project over another being "a real band with actual musical merit" would seem to not recognize that, or at least doesn't give that impression. And, sorry, but some people spend a little too much time talking about music as if their opinions are made of gold and everyone else has tin ears. Also, fuck you.
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