So who ARE that insufferable indie couple in the new Hyundai TV ads?

just that my old man's taste is weird and unpredictable

who is it in that ad anyway?

some Danish group with a silly name

ha

that is a guy w/ excellent manual coordination

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty9Smrs67s8

I like her much better when she stops mugging. It's annoying in videos, but it just doesn't work at all on stage.

Why do I keep clicking on this thread? It's like picking a scab, or repeatedly sniffing the air after someone's farted, just to confirm to yourself how bad it is.

yeah she really does just not ever stop making stupid faces

http://www.mousepotatoes.com/about/covers/its_a_condition.jpg

00:49 ohgodohgodohgod

didn't make it any farther

^^^ ditto

Its even worse because her timing is nowhere near as "hilarious" as it must be in her head.

I am amused by the visceral hate these guys provoke. They're like the cilantro of music.

honestly they don't really bug me so much but it is really funny to watch people foam at the mouth over them

I don't like the fact that they make my head want to explode, but there it is

http://i54.tinypic.com/jubst5.gif

The guy is actually much more of a douchebag in my eyes.

I like that bit in the Angry Birds video where she punches him in the mouth.

who plays angry birds with the music on

that game has really awesome sound design /:

i'm curious about, like, why people would actually like this band, and what that says about music and stuff

is that video, above, just a half hour of them performing to no audience? how peculiar

In 2011, Pomplamoose began a weekly, interactive, half-hour webcast called “Hey, It's Pomplamoose: A Show about Pomplamoose and Other Things” that airs every Tuesday. After the March 29th show, the webcast has been put on hiatus until their East Coast tour is completed. They will be joined by Ryan Lerman and Carlos Cabrera as they open for fellow YouTube stars OK Go.

Angry Birds is actually terrible, and combined with that 'game essay' on Pitchfork about it (the worst thing I've ever read about video games), Pomplamoose's take on it is as easy to hate as anything ever was.

it ... really isn't, though

this pitchfork thing looks like fun!!

"What follows is my attempt to understand the widespread popularity of a mobile videogame called Angry Birds. I don't play games, but"

uh oh

"Think about that the next time you're playing-- sitting in the handicap stall of your company's bathroom"

He got me.

The girl has a funny way about her, but I don't find her hateable. They are both irritatingly upbeat though, and their act is weak. That said:

honestly they don't really bug me so much but it is really funny to watch people foam at the mouth over them

Yeah, I doubt I'd even give them a second's thought if it wasn't for all the ire they inspire on here.

I don't know. Is it funny that people hate Hitler?

have you been here too long to be on the valuable new posters thread

I think this kind of "bank of mom and dad" marketing to twentysomethings - like "hey kids ask your parents to buy you this toy!" aged up to cars and apartments - should be confined to billboards in hipster neighborhoods. It's just gonna engender rage and hate in the wider world.

Band banter kind of reminds me of http://www.hulu.com/watch/147961/saturday-night-live-npr.

“Hey, It's Pomplamoose: A Show about Pomplamoose and Other Things”

I didn't know they were Finnish!

They're not; they're just getting started.

Angry Birds is actually terrible

This comment annoys me more than Pomplamoose. For an ubiquitous app game, Angry Birds is incredibly designed and thoughtful.

i've only played the version for chrome but i liked it a lot and will probably be buying it for the iphone too once i get an iphone!!!

there might be a parallel in that there was a genre of rough-looking, but fun,
knocking-things-over games that was happy to exist tastefully out of people's radars,
until someone decided to put animal characters on everything.

hi dere, spielberg produced and animals out the wazoo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_Blox

one of the things that bugs me about pomplamoose is that in music and mannerisms they resemble children's show hosts, but are seemingly targeting their music/performance at adults. the endless mugging, upbeat wackiness and reassuring demonstrations of friendly intent are enticing in a way ("hey kids, lets all have a good time right now!"). i mean, why be so churlish as to sneer at unpretentious good times? it feels like hating the muppets. but pomplamoose aren't the muppets. they don't come with that sort of wit and inventiveness. they're simply a nice voice and some denatured cover tunes to go with it. absent the sort of brilliance that animated the muppets, the smarmy blue's clues mannerisms become gratingly infantile.

beyond that, while i basically loathe them, i can sort of see the appeal - you know, to someone else, some drip. natalie's voice is hardly an instrument of great range and dimension from what i've heard, but it's pleasant enough, and their vaguely jazzy indie schmaltz is reasonably well performed. they've even got an ear for hooks. here are two pomplamoose originals (i think?) that clarify where they're coming from (high holy godland) and what they've got to offer (saccharine twee). probably helps if you don't watch the videos while listening:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il-OFaFzHQM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9KMgg7T_sg

apologies if they've been previously posted

plus jack is a thousand times more horribly annoying that natalie could ever hope to be. the camera lingers longer on natalie, for obvious reasons, so you spend more time marinating in her bullshit, but he's toxic in even the smallest doses.

Given their trademark schtick ("I'll be the crazy guy, jumping up and down banging on pots, and you'll be the waifish-kid-in-the-painting-whose-eyes-follow-you-around-the-room"), is it wrong for me to wonder if they're also like that in the sack?

(Dude seems poised to be the next Paul Shafer, btw)

I don't know, the dude seems at least a teeny-tiny bit self-aware about how ridiculous he is and decides to just relish it, but the girl was told she was "such a cute and precocious kid" too many time at age six and decided to dedicate the rest of her life to preserving that feeling.

I can't see that guy without thinking it's a bizarro version of Sebastian from DFA 1979

"the girl was told she was "such a cute and precocious kid" too many time at age six and decided to dedicate the rest of her life to preserving that feeling."

OTM. I've been trying to come up with something of any substantial content to write about these guys, but it's as if I can't even think through the all-consuming, frothing rage that clouds my entire consciousness within five seconds of one of their songs. There's something vile and insidious and reprehensible underneath it all that I'm having a hard time putting my finger on, but it's palpable. Their immense success, the way people defend them (I'm basing this on the backlash to the anti-Pomplamoose SF Weekly blog post linked way upthread, stuff like "They're rich, moron, looks like they won!", "Why so bitter? They're just cute and happy!", "Better than all the crass stuff clogging our pop airwaves"), how disgustingly calculated it all is... It just reminds you with the delicacy of a sledgehammer blow how easily people fall for the soul-suffocatingly mediocre.

okay, i feel you. i, too, dislike their music and presentation on an immediate, visceral level. nevertheless, i feel the need to check myself in response to questions like, "why so bitter? they're just cute and happy!" because they really are just that: cute and happy (or so it seems). which prompts me to wonder, "so, what's wrong with that?" seriously, what's wrong with upbeat jollity and big, warm musical hugs, with care bear pop? is my distaste predicated not on coherent aesthetic objections, but on the simple incapacities of my withered, grinch-like heart? maybe my inner child is a spoiled little brat after all...

i want to believe that "[t]here's something vile and insidious and reprehensible underneath it all," that there really IS something "disgustingly calculated" at the heart of it, but i just don't know. i probably wouldn't object if they were all stylishly dour and po-faced, singing songs about dismal undertakings and performing them with a smoke and sneer (the kills or suchlike). so why does a similarly shallow presentation of upbeat funtimes kiddiepop arouse such violent loathing in me?

the best i can come up with is that there's something repellent in their weaponized combination of creepy-crawly infantilism, one-dimensional cuteness and hucksterish showboating. i don't think they're phony, necessarily, but they somehow turn joyful, sesame street wholesomeness into this grueling sales pitch, into a giant, candy-coated billboard (gross), and it bugs me. i don't want to be sold, don't need whatever it is they're shilling. "cute" any isn't a bad thing by any means, but on its own it gets cloying fast, and i don't think pomplamoose have anything to offer but sugared starch, musical babyfood, creamy spoonfed glop.

then again, maybe i was just born bad. i mean, come on: so, so many of my favorite bands make an equally obvious sales pitch of their nocturnal degeneracy...

The thing that got the hate train rolling for me was, of course, their fans' youtube comments. Especially on covers of Single Ladies and the like.

I'm guessing I shouldn't have started reading more about them. The fact that they have an EP called 3 New Songs Woot! makes me even angrier.

"they somehow turn joyful, sesame street wholesomeness into this grueling sales pitch, into a giant, candy-coated billboard (gross), and it bugs me."

that's not quite it, is it? because actual sesame street shilling has a different flavor to it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vghuB11j88M

there's something more sinister at work

Contenderizer so OTM with the comparison to Blue's Clues upthread. Nataly's stare-into-camera schtick really IS an awful lot like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4kxlY2_nqo&feature=related

well, yeah, the muppets are fucking funny, even in dumb-ass commercials. sesame street's a good deal sweeter and much less antic.

xpost

A friend of mine showed me Karmin and i figure they belong on this thread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khCokQt--l4