Foster The People – Torches
Like Mumford and Sons, Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros, and Coldplay before them, there is something about this band that moistens a woman’s pants. I don’t know if it’s the whole “rock-star in the quad” thing where any guy who can competently strum a few chords to “Ripple” usually cleans up some really easy snatch in the first semester very quickly. But whatever it is keeps me at arm’s length from all of these bands. There’s just something off.
This album in particular seems to want its fingers in every single indie sub-genre that has found crossover success in the past couple years. We have dance-pop(ala Phoenix), Starbucks-core, flannel-wearin’ good ol’ boy folk posturing(ala Mumford), big-chorus arena rockers, and so on. It all feels patched together in some really cynical way, where maximizing your potential to end up in an iTunes commercial is commensurate to developing a true artistic voice. Or maybe it’s not that sinister. Maybe they’re just really safe and bland pop musicians. And that’s fine too. They possess some talent and can clearly write decent hooks. The point is…there’s too much music for me to find much reason to bother, unless of course a girl at a bar tells me how they’re “amazing” they are. In that case, I become Joseph-fucking-Cotton trying to convincingly sell how awesome I think they are. Until then, fuck this album.
Pretty girls: isn’t this song awesome? Maybe we can hang out and talk about it and I can touch your knee!
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