Things which may or may not be cool

You know how it goes — you see some­thing here or there, some form of enter­tain­ment media or curio item and for some reason you can’t seem to cat­egor­ise what it is you’ve actu­ally seen.  You watched the whole thing or picked it up and turned it round and stared at it but you just can’t fig­ure out what exactly you’re sup­posed to make of it.

Some­thing about it is ter­rible.  Stu­pid even.  Some­thing about it is deffin­itely off and you know that you just shouldn’t like it.  It would be ridicu­lously uncool to like it.

But then there’s some­thing about this thing that is also indes­crib­ably awe­some.  Time and time again, when you think no-one is look­ing you go back to it — this thing that lies some­where on the bor­der between fuck­ing ter­ri­fy­ing and unset­tlingly terrific.

Here at Super­Pos­i­tion Kitty we enjoy things like that and spend a good deal of time uniron­ic­ally lik­ing many things that per­haps we shouldn’t.  But what’s life lived without a few dirty secrets?  So in this spirit we present to you the first in a series of lists and art­icles con­cern­ing ‘things which may or may not be cool’.

This time round it’s music.

TATU — How Soon is Now? It’s easy to react to TATU what with their musical career being punc­tu­ated with vari­ous degrees of sapphic erot­ica and con­trived con­tro­versy but that’s in the past. The import­ant thing is that they’re Rus­sian and bet­ter at this song than Morrissey.

Mint Roy­ale and Lauren Lav­erne — Don’t Fal­ter. Pure and simple turn of the cen­tury sweet­ness with BBC Cul­ture Show presenter Lauren Laverne.

Lemon Jelly — Nice Weather for Ducks. From the 2002 album ‘Lost Hori­zons’. Very, very good.

Liam Lynch The Museum Rap. You’ve prob­ably heard of Liam Lynch. He’s been around for a while. Known as a man who once described him­self as ‘a watered down idiot sav­ant’ he owns one Finnigan Force­field — a cat cloned from his ori­ginal and beloved pet Frankie Force­field. Love him or hate him he’s pretty special.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=fE975gHk0ks (embed­ding dis­abled)
Alisha’s Attic — Push It All Aside. Two sis­ters whose debut single has remained stuck in my head for the past 12 years sing a song about get­ting along and per­form a syn­chron­ised dance routine to an equally catchy tune.

1200 Tech­niques — Karma. A prime example of Aus­tralian hip-hop : it may not be done well but it’s catchy!

Hill­top Hoods — Dumb Enough. It’s a swan.

Kiiiiiii — 4 Little Joeys. What can I say about two Japan­ese ladies play­ing toy instru­ments and singing a song about baby kangaroos? Not much really, apart from that it’s quite good.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=aQM_pDAfbIE (embed­ding dis­abled)
Gwen Stefani — Hol­laback Girl. THIS SHIT IS BANANAS. B. A. N. A. N. A. S. It quite lit­er­ally is.

Lily Allen — The Fear. Like a lot of artists who find instant suc­cess through a ground swell of ador­a­tion provided by MySpace Lily has had a hard time in terms of hold­ing onto the zeit­geist of cool. Which is a shame because her pres­ence on the music scene makes pop a little more palatable.

Hawk­s­ley Work­man — Jeal­ous Of Your Cigar­ette. A man who sings gui­tar solos like Hawk­s­ley Work­man reg­u­larly does should not be good at music but some­how he really is.

Poly­s­ics — Elec­tric Surf­ing Go Go. A Japan­ese band not­able for sound­ing like a SNES game fall­ing down a flight of stairs dur­ing an air raid and hav­ing a super kawaii robot-dancing synth player.

Bat for Lashes — What’s A Girl To Do? This video has BMX’s in it.

Chicks on Speed — We Don’t Play Gui­tars. This band appar­ently dis­play their vagi­nas on over head pro­ject­ors at the end of their gigs. Art school bands are awesome.

Ore Ska Band — Hana No Suka Dance. A group of Japan­ese school girls who upon decid­ing to start a band real­ised that the instru­ments that they played only allowed it to be a ska band.