Body Language
Reviewed by: Max Miller
The year was 2010, although, really, the ball didn’t get rolling until 2011. A band no one had heard of called Foster the People dropped their debut single “Pumped Up Kicks.” It was one of those maddeningly catchy indie-pop songs that simultaneously felt timeless and like it could only have been released circa 2011. Unless you are four years old, you know the rest of the story. (And if you are four years old, I’d like to compliment you on your stellar reading comprehension skills.)
Of course, as much as we’d like to believe successful songs like “Pumped Up Kicks” just come out of nowhere every now and again, the truth is far more calculated. Foster the People was formed around commercial jingle writer Mark Foster, who had a penchant for crafting irresistible hooks which could only be matched by his ability to go with what must literally have been the first band name he thought up. The fact Foster wrote songs for ads is probably the most common thing his detractors know about him. Second most common would be his upbeat hit’s disarmingly dark chorus: “All the other kids with the pumped up kicks/ You better run, better run, faster than my bullet.”
Looking back, 2011 feels like it happened a lot longer than five years ago. The brand of hit songs sparked by the likes of MGMT was beginning to wane around the arrival of “Pumped Up Kicks.” The sound of popular songs has changed innumerably over the past years; indeed, the mid-’10s have been one of the weirdest eras for pop music. But one of the rules of this era seems to be that anything we once thought was dead might just come back. Columbus, OH’s Kid Runner, who sound like they could have practically named themselves after Foster the People’s hit, aim to prove that Mark Foster’s hooky indie-pop template can still work.
On Body Language, the group’s latest EP since their 2012 formation, Kid Runner drop six tracks that all feel like they were formulated to become hit singles. “Give Me Something To Love” centers around a fist-pumping “woah-oh” vocal hook and bubbling synths. “Don’t Change Me” features gang vocals aplenty and nearly-rapped verses from vocalist Drew Lizon that ought to appeal to the 21 Pilots crowd. The drums on Body Language are produced so that they always pop amidst the dense synthesizer arrangements, and singer Fran Litterski’s vocals are often heavily processed and layered so that hooks bounce off one another like popcorn in a kettle.
Listening to Body Language all the way through can give you a bit of an ice cream headache. By the time “Different Kind Of Love” explodes with its chirping EDM synth hook and funky bass, you can’t help but feel like all of these songs are just minor variations on the same theme, packaged together to maximize the odds of one catching on and becoming a colossal hit. It doesn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination to envision one of these songs actually making it — my money’s on the aforementioned “Different Kind Of Love,” which, in isolation, has an almost vintage Max Martin charm to it. And if Kid Runner land a hit, we can all be sick of them collectively, just like we were when Foster the People dominated the airwaves. Five years later, though, “Pumped Up Kicks” almost seems charming. I guess there’s something to be said for having time to eat your ice cream slowly.
Rating: Semi-Obnoxious
