Credit: Found On Internet

There’s something thoroughly irksome about Subliminal Girls. Their last single, ‘Burn KOKO’, was a shoulders-back, lip-curled sneer at London indie-culture. It simultaneously managed to pompously deride music fans who weren’t “hardcore” indie, and similarly turn their nose up at very elitist scenesterism, as if the band couild somehow transcend the entire spectrum and comment upon it from a big white high horse, perched atop the local peak of moral high ground.

They’ve continued to maximise how objectionable they are with their latest single, ‘Self Obsession is an Art Form’. The vocals have an airy lilt of Pete Doherty to them, with lyrics more ruggishly literal than the guffish poetry of The Nation’s Favourite Junkie ® . That doesn’t stop there from being something gratingly self-satisfied about these three minutes of post-pub sentimentalist beige.

The first B-side, ‘Posh Girls Names’, almost, almost makes up for it, with an Art Brut-ish twinge, a babbling stream of consciousness underneath an almost Eddie Argos anti-pop delivery. Which just makes it even more of a shame that the second extra track, ‘Electronic Hearts’, continues their prior hypocritical rants against hipster culture, rolling their music-eyes at “Clichéd bands and pointless art”.

Subliminal Girls play ‘ Small Town Girl’ and ‘Self Obsession is an Art From’, live at Selfridges:

Maybe it’s me that’s missing something? Maybe this is a joke that I just don’t get? Maybe it’s a big ironic statement that I haven’t been able to see an edge of in order to get a handle on the whole thing? Maybe I’ve had too many cups of coffee and I’m seeing masked contempt when there is none?

Oh, wait - the band have got a vinyl boxset version of this release out for £1200, because they’ve got Brit artist, Stuart Semple, to design the various gubbins that goes with the tunes (click here for the full deal). That’s not at all pretentious, is it? To use a phrase like “so far up their own arse they can’t see daylight” in conjunction with Subliminal Girls wouldn’t be too harsh, would it?

‘Self Obsession is an Artform’ is out on PopArt London on November 17. For more info, go check out Subliminal Girls' official website.