Bands Like Interpol, Bloc Party, And To Some Degree Franz Ferdinand Have Taken The Superficial Trappings Of Post-Punk And Re-Fabricated Them From An Assembly Line Of Poseurism And Bullshit Hipness.

I've encountered two types of people who like She Wants Revenge: the ignorant and the misguided. Perhaps I pity the ignorant more: they like She Wants Revenge because to their tin ears and their lack of context, the band fits in somewhere in an imaginary revival of post-punk.

I say "imaginary" because not even a single one of the so-called post-punk revival bands have exhibited any of the qualities that made post-punk what it was: originality, political sophistication and interesting guitar playing.

In fact, they've utterly exorcised them.

Bands like Interpol, Bloc Party, and to some degree Franz Ferdinand have taken the superficial trappings of post-punk and re-fabricated them from an assembly line of poseurism and bullshit hipness, creating a smarmy bastardization based on Gang of Four beats and harebrained phony aloofness. It says a lot for the gullibility of the record-buying public that bands like this have managed to become cool merely by pretending to be cool.
David Thorpe