Pre-emptive Musical Self Defense

I recently bought Phantom Planet's 2008 disc Raise the Dead. I have listened to it about 10 times now and I still enjoy all of it, and I feel like I have to defend myself.
Phantom Planet is most known for the song California which served as the theme song for the epitome of teenage angst, pop-punk/emo, rich-white-kids-with-problems television series The OC. So Phantom Planet got pegged into this genre/culture (The lead singer Alex Greenwald being a former Gap model might have also helped this). Their concerts were and still are full of teenage girls trying to be older than they are using daddy's credit card to buy table merch. And for the most part, Phantom Planet has accepted this role. They know their audience and they embrace them. Switching to the Fueled by Ramen label instantly connected them with others firmly established in the teenage bracket such as Paramore, The Academy Is..., Cute Is What We Aim For, and emo kings Jimmy Eat World.
But my point with all this is that even though the brand persona of Phantom Planet fits easily into all this neo-yuppiness, their music is bold, subversive, intricate, and solidly crafted.
Borrowing from rock and roll legends like Elvis Costello, Greenwald's songs work as stripped down acoustic songs, or layered and intricate as in the albums (produced by Tony Berg).
The lyrics are dark, frustrated and dirty, yet subversively refer to having a good time. In "Do The Panic" Greenwald shouts for the dancers to "Put your left foot in. Now put your other left in" and then audibly chuckles. You'd think it no more than a cute pun until Greenwald comes back with the condescending observation, "Are you having trouble getting it down?" What seems an unrealistic and joking expectation becomes an real expectation that you as the dancer are failing at. "Quarantine" is a commentary on safe sex. And Greenwald deals with postmodern fragmentation of identity in "Leave Yourself For Somebody Else." "Leader" is a first person narrative from a cult follower with a disturbingly cute chorus of oohs sang by a choir of children.
No matter that Phantom Planet was and is seen as part of the teeny-bopping myspace culture, when it comes right down to it, they aren't. And that's why I feel justified in totally digging this album.