Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

Cobra Starship ft. Sabi – You Make Me Feel

Poor lonely Edward, fighting the good fight…


[Video][Website]
[3.50]

Brad Shoup: It was Gabe Saporta, years ago, who divulged his intention to become the punk-rock Justin Timberlake. The prospect intrigued me enough to hold onto the quote, despite 1) the fact that Cobra Starship’s singles were ass, and 2) clearly, Hank Rollins is Timberpunk. Their newest offering lacks ambition of any kind; Saporta’s singing is mixed bashfully low, and the vocal fuckery that transformed Britney sounds like a cell dropped in water when transferred to his pipes. Toss in the “So What” riff and the wholesale swipe of Rihanna’s contribution to “Live Your Life” and we are confronting a fatal dearth of imagination. If someone had cut things short at “make my world stop,” then we coulda had a true novelty: club-single-as-overdose-experience.
[1]

Pete Baran: I like Cobra Starship when they come on like Andrew WK’s younger snottier brothers, telling me about how important it is to party, dance and maybe avoid snakes on a plane. Yet this career arc reminds me a bit of the diminishing returns from Dragonette’s career — basically I don’t think the world wants or needs charismatic dance pop bands. And this is Cobra Starship with much of the charisma knocked off (which may be the idea).
[3]

Alfred Soto: I commend them for trying so hard to irritate every target audience, especially electropop enthusiasts unmoved by the vocal gadgetry and disco fans who got excited when they thought this a Sylvester cover. Best of all: the stop-start nonsense. Kudos.
[2]

Anthony Easton: Is the product placement for Midori, the inclusion of Robin Williams, or the phrase feeling Jersey, the most cryptic thing about this video. The song is alright, better during the slower, more piano drenched moments, and it’s too long by half, but the video — WTF.
[6]

Michaela Drapes: I can’t separate the video from the song really, so: Half a point for the delightful product placement (who gets wasted on Midori, ew!), half a point for Robin Williams trying to pull a Bill Murray, half a point for the annoying chorus that won’t leave my head, and half a point for the like, five years too late fake Misshapes theme.
[2]

Edward Okulicz: So evidently Cobra Starship are now a better LMFAO with decent choruses. Look, that sounds like faint praise, but it is one hell of a chorus on this track, even if Sabi sleepwalks through the hook.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Dear songwriters: When you replace the object of sentences like “you make me feel so…” with nonsense syllables or instrumentation, you are suggesting the ineffable — that which can be only be said in sound. Judging by this sound, Cobra and friends feel like the quiet, neglected throb lingering over the club speakers just after closing time.
[4]

Jake Cleland: Oh boy. What a shame. What a shame, what a bummer. What a terrible catastrophe. What a colossal mistake. What a cataclysmic error. What an apocalyptic DISASTER. I miss Cobra Starship, the goofy, playful electro-pop band who made a home music video for their best single and then parodied it with a follow-up starring Patrick Stump. The band who got their name from the time Gabe was tripping on snake venom and a divine cobra taught him how to dance on his spaceship. The band who were in Snakes on a motherfucking Plane! At least they weren’t the band that made pseudo-soulmate club banger dreck. The guitars are pretty tight and there’s a moment in the video where Alex Suarez is “Santi”, suggesting they’ve got at least a vague memory of where they came from, but it’s not enough to make up for the fact that it makes me feel so blah blah blah blah blah.
[2]

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