The Postal Service

We Will Become Silhouettes (Sub Pop)
By Tim Den

Don’t even get me started on the popularity of The Postal Service. It ruptures the spleen to try and figure out just how something so kitschy, trite, regurgitated, unimaginative, calculatedly (not to mention nauseatingly) “overprecious” can be eaten up so willingly. But garbage has always sold: lowest common denominator, right? It’s how the “biz” has been able to make people buy into Vanilla Ice, MC Hammer, New Kids On The Block, Backstreet Boys, and then produce nostalgia shows about ’em afterward (thanks, VH1!) in which everyone talks about how bad all that shit was. Well I got a question for y’all: If it was so bad, why did you buy into it in the first place? And if you bought it like coke-starved hookers, what gives you the right to go on TV as a third-rate celeb and turn your back on it? Own up to what you bought, ya bunch of turncoat wagon-hoppers.

At this rate, it’s only a matter of time before people laugh about how they ate up The Postal Service, to the point where multiple EPs with nothing but shitty remixes are demanded. The newbie, “Be Still My Heart,” is not a complete throwaway (surprisingly), but Matthew Dear’s remix of the title track should’ve never left his laptop. Stringing everything together with nothing more than a monotonous guitar chord – yup, ONE repeating guitar chord – the song experiences like Chinese water torture. Bring. Bring. Bring. PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP! It’s driving me nuts like a little kid poking his finger into my side over and over again!

We Will Become Silhouettes is more of what people want… for now. History and the power of hindsight will hopefully make them realize their poor judgment down the road… but “down the road” can’t come soon enough.
(www.subpop.com)