"Take a good look/ Take a photo/ Write about it in your little notebook."

There's something deliciously liberating about coming to a record a blank slate upon which they can scribble their brilliance. It may be awful compared to X! It may be derivative! It may be a note-for-note cover of some infinitely brilliant song, but as long as I haven't heard X, or the entire genre it's channeling, or the original track, I am pure. I am cleansed of comparison, free to judge entirely in the moment of my pop experience.

And oh, is this an interesting little pop moment.

First, the electro-drawling verse of swooping darlings, all arched eyebrows and droll sarcasm because god, we've got our Mission apartment stacked with vinyl you've never heard of. We spend our weekends building interactive conceptual installations, and deliberating over neuvaux techo renaissance. You could never be as chic, as worthily intellectual and
artistic as us, my dear.

Then, just as I'm accepting my ignorance of such lofty things, admitting to my cultural inferiority, something astounding happens. Shampoo reform, in order that they may kick these pretenders out of frame with their pink sparkly DMs! Trampling over the subtle arch musings, they yell and shout with graceless enthusiasm. And the incongruent brilliance! Suddenly, the
hip scenesters realise the error of their ways, but they're in denial, they can't cede territory yet; so back with their femme fatale verse, yet this time they've raised the game. They know the stakes. A firmer rhythm, more insistent electro, but still that's not enough to stave of the impostors, and again the raucous attack.

Now it's personal. On with the sublimely floating middle bridge, descending into incomprehensible aural texture, but by now it doesn't matter because they've seen the error of their ways. Why bother with such posturing when they can simply cry 'Uh-oh' with such fabulous pointlessness? Why attempt elegant craftmanship when the battle cry of 'TKO/ Hear it on the stereo' in two tones achieves so much more?

And so it ends, as all things must, with the acknowledgement of Shampoo's cultural superiority. A lesson well learned indeed.

Watch the video here