Twee on me

An oft repeated Apple commercial is enough to make a song that I really like icky and cloying (Feist's "1234," por ejemplo). In the case of this new ad for the fourth generation ipod nano, featuring a snippet of the song "Bruises" by Brooklyn outfit, Chairlift, I am driven to despair, sometimes blind rage. The song or partial song is rash-inducing and post-apocalyptically twee. It's danceable and that melodic line sung toward the end and the singer's voice are rather fine, but the lyrics . . . "I tried to do handstands for you. Every time I fell on you. Yeah, every time I fell for you."—these are the pathetic, tinny, retrograde spasms of the tired old slag that is the marketable hipster of 2008.

This girl sentimentally recalls the time that she tried to impress a lost love with her less than stellar gymnastics skills, no doubt while wearing a pastel striped leotard, because what could possibly be more attractive to a bitter, fey, nervous, self-loathing hipster dude than a woman who acts like she's seven? I know that the word "hipster" has become meaningless. The hipster is nothing new; Liberally defined, he might be John Keats, one of the flashy, slang-dropping kids of the 1920s, certainly any of a line of youth-culture saveurs after the Beats. "Hipster" has only become a dirty word as the market has taken a sick hold over it (obviously not for the first time), and since callow youths seem only to care for sneakers, haircuts, and a sick compulsion to behave like elementary schoolers (kickball tournaments?!). This must pass. It's dull and unsexy and driven by clueless Middle American transplants to the Big City who seem to think David Byrne and the color lavender are fresh. Recession times call for dark, sharp, strong archetypes, an actual stab at Avant-garde maybe?

Sorry if I offended, dear readers (as I said, blind rage).