People are easily pleased…

Wed. March 24, 2004
Categories: Abstract Dynamics

I can’t believe that, in the poptimism wars of a few weeks back, people were citing The Scissor Sisters as a reason to be excited.
The Scissor Sisters. Bloody hell. That new single: it’s MOR in the most mediocre and uninteresting sense, isn’t it.
As for Franz Ferdinand, well: a photostat of twenty-year old art rock/ post punk…

13 Responses to “People are easily pleased…”

  1. undercurrent Says:

    haha yeah innit, I remember reading in some magazine that the SS were ‘the future of art rock’…on the strength of a novelty cover-version. That new single is a classic of the genre of reverting-to-type-after-novelty-hit, my god it’s so awful.

  2. Tom Says:

    I only just got the album as a birthday present. I hated the Pink Floyd cover after a few listens but the rest of it is fine I think – good, hooky pop and the sleazed-up AOR sound works for me. It’s kind of taking a decadence that was always implicit in that 70s coke/cock pop and making it front-and-center obvious – that lack of subtlety is what stops it ever being great I reckon, but I don’t think it’s a bad record either.

  3. Tom Says:

    Being easily pleased is my ‘thing’ though!
    (Franz Ferdinand I agree are rubbish judging on the singles.)

  4. luke Says:

    i will now recount a conversation i had with the bloke who gives me a lift home from work two nights a week.
    ‘have you heard of a group called the scissor sisters?’
    ‘no’
    ‘good they are. yeah, their got a song out now, sounds exactly like abba’
    ‘yeah?’
    ‘yeah, good it is. their last one before that, sounded like the bee-gees’
    ‘ok. i’ll listen out for them’

  5. undercurrent Says:

    LOL
    such sophisticated irony is lost on some people 😉

  6. mark k-punk Says:

    It’s on the Box as I type: fuck, don’t geddit, what’s Art Rock about it? It’s not the future of anything, it’s the past of AOR – it sounds like LEO SAYER and 70s ELTON JOHN, this latter no bad thing in itself natch….And it’s so PLEASED WITH ITSELF…..

  7. mark k-punk Says:

    I don’t suppose it’s a BAD record, Tom, (well….) but it’s not exactly the saviour of pop in the way some ppl trumpeted during the Poptimist discussions…. What I don’t really grasp is its self-evident brilliance…. Certainly don’t think it makes ANY SORT of case for poptimism. On the contrary, actually, what could be more of an indication about how washed up and terminally PoMo mediocre Pop has become….

  8. undercurrent Says:

    no, it IS a bad record.

  9. mark k-punk Says:

    I don’t know if ‘bad’ quite captures it, Robin… but inconsequent, old-fashioned, middle-aged, smug, irrelevant …. yeh

  10. Tim Finney Says:

    Maybe too late to add to this comments box but… how could anyone think that Scissor Sisters were on the side of Poptimism? That would be like saying that Oasis scored a decisive victory for avant-rock. Everything about Scissor Sisters seems to say “It was better then, and we are content to genuflect…” If they were mimicking Gary Numan instead of Elton John perhaps it would be more obvious, but I totally interpreted Scissor Sisters as being *against* pop in its current manifestations.

  11. Anonymous Says:

    it bad

  12. ToRi Says:

    it bad man

  13. Zoey Shameron Says:

    i don’t know if any one has ever heard the band DEAD PEOPLE WALKING it is the wost no really they are a 80s 90 s band and the music is so old the dand is a diss to all people that play punk misic and that listen to puck as well so let this be a warning stay from DEAD PEOPLE WALKING they suck