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true dat matt, but the video is really nice. (sorry 'bout the ad at the end. it was the first "official video" i could find)

― tricky, Monday, February 16, 2009 9:57 PM (32 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it's an awesome video and song, btw not ragging on honey in any way.

though lol i've always been a bit perplexed at 'honey''s inclusion - it's got a real bonus track gem feel to it. i see 'telephone' as the real (and perfect) closer.

i can't see what tricky posted, but if it's a video of honey, then yeah what matt dc said. it sounds corny to say but it's one of those albums that you can't pick a track out to rep for, it's a whole album experience

yeah, removing any of the trax from their context seems like doing them a disservice to me. still, don't think one can go too wrong w/a live youtube of 'soldier'...

she pretty much explicitly states that she is her people

well that gets into the self-regard i was talking about. don't know what kogan said about it, but i have a feeling i'd agree.

i do like a lot of the tracks and production on new amerykah, i'm not really down on it. just saying there are possible reasons for not loving it other than not liking/getting modern soul/r&b.

yeah i think "honey" actually is a bonus track and if it ended with "telephone" i'd be happy too. the thing about "honey" though is that it feels like a release after the non-stop intensity of the album.

This album has absolutely flown by (GGD), excellent stuff, although I think I narrowly prefer the last track to the penultimate one...solid all the way through

ggd's album getting the l0u1s jagg3r stamp of approval is a small silver lining in all of their gear getting burned up imo

The only thing I don't love about the entire GGD album is the very last chord, where it sounds like they're shutting down their laptop at the end.

though lol i've always been a bit perplexed at 'honey''s inclusion - it's got a real bonus track gem feel to it. i see 'telephone' as the real (and perfect) closer.

i think they're both perfect closers - 'telephone' is the ideal way to sign off new amerykah as statement, but 'real thang' and 'honey' make for a brilliant epilogue - like, she's led you on this mind-blowing and kinda intense trip through the album proper, made you think hard and feel deeply, and then she reminds you of how great really simple, relaxing positivity can be - like coming out of the cinema after some really intense film and just going to the park to lie around in the sun and drink wine with your friends.

lol (xxpost)

ie what tricky said about it being a release

that's a great way of thinking about it, lex. i didnt have 'real thang' for the longest time as it was UK-only iirc, but it's a fine song too.

"The whole album aesthetic feels a bit like a sugary tepid, washed-out imitation of an e rush put together by kids who have only read about it, but have stumbled across something really great anyway surprisingly ordinary, but which has been talked up quite beyond belief seemingly everywhere"

Fandango not to get all ad hominem but do you even like any music on the basis of it offering a real (or close to that) e rush? I've never pegged you that way.

""Pious" implies either a) a reverence which isn't present in the album at all, or b) a certain amount of lecturing, which just isn't the feeling I take from her commentary - when she talks about her people, about society, there's a generosity and compassion there which "pious" would preclude. See the line "To my girls on prescription pills" in 'Soldier' - a pious singer would castigate them for their behaviour. Erykah just sings, warmly and understandingly, "I know how you feel". Which isn't surprising - 'Me' is followed immediately by 'My People', and she pretty much explicitly states that she is her people. She's not above her characters, and just cuz she's kicking people in the ass and sharing her wisdom doesn't mean she's not including herself in that. Actually, putting 'Me' so near the start of the album is a statement of her intent not to be pious."

Lex c'mon this is classic sympathetic interpretation. You could just as easily say that "I know how you feel" is condescending in its assumption that she understands everything that other people go through. Conflating yourself with your people could just as easily be an arrogant reduction between her personal shit and the shit of a community. This is Christian Piety 101. Of course she's not lecturing girls on prescription pills - no-one within a very broad swathe of the liberal/lefty/artsy community would do that, and Erykah pretty clearly belongs to that community. But her politics on this album also remind me of a lot of lefty broadsheet writers over here who do strike me as - yes - rather "pious" in their scrupulously Jesus-like identification with the poor and the oppressed and the imperfect. I mean, good on them, better that than the other way round - but an air of piety goes with this territory no matter how nuanced you try to be.

Not that I hate Badu but I think you haven't disproved Frank's argument above.

5 - Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
324 points, 25 votes, 1 #1 votes
2 in P&J, 7 in p4k

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/9341/vampireweekendvampirewecp5.jpg

Okay thoughts on the album:

- It's really good, in ways I hadn't anticipated and maybe can't quite articulate yet.

- The reason they are really good is nothing to do with the 'ZOMG! They are mixing indie punk with African and Irish music!" Emperor's New Clothes nonsense present in all the hype. If anything, these moments are brief flourishes and nothing more. And once again it shows how low collective expectations of new guitar bands have become, that if one shows any evidence of knowing what to do with a rhythm section then it suddenly beocmes a huge selling point.

- The moments when there ARE African or Irish influences prominent in the music threaten to teeter over into atrocious Sting/Paul Simon territory but never actually do so. Possibly because the band understand the value of RESTRAINT.

- This sense of restraint is maybe why Nick Southall might have been right all along. Compared to most of the other overhyped rock records of the last few years, this one feels so... tidy! You listen to any haircut indie of the past through years, starting from The Killers and through Bloc Party, the Arctic Monkeys, The Klaxons and Los Fucking Campasinos and there's just sonic clutter everywhere. The Vampire Weekend album hardly puts anything anywhere that doesn't need to be there, and that feels refreshing and crisp - cf the bass and drums at the start of 'Campus'. Ironically this is exactly what I would have attacked The Strokes for in 2001.

- It's bubblegum pop grown up a few years, with exactly the same concerns dressed up differently, isn't it? "I see you walking across the campus..." is the sort of timeless girly chorus you'd expect to hear in any pop record of the last few decades. Production-wise, it sounds like that as well, and yet I don't even remotely hold that against it...

― Matt DC

gross

I mean, as a piece I think Saint Dymphna pretty much perfect, there's hardly anything I'd change, even the sections where nothing much happens. But at ther same time what I especially love is the little hooks and segments and refrains, like the guitar at the end of Desert Storm, that threaten to expand into entire tracks but never do. It's like it's full of unexplored possibilies that, if they'd jammed them out, would have seen the album take on a different but no less excellent shape.

(xxxpost - WOAH I didn't see that coming)

i don't think i'm going to argue that badu has a huge ego, but if that makes her come out with quotes like this pre-album, i'm all for it:

"Different thoughts kept coming into my head. The first thought was, ooh, I wonder if my hair gonna be cute when I get out. And then another voice over me said, Ego, we need you, we're going to need you for our mission. And another voice over my head goes, oh, Willpower, bless your heart, you're going to be stronger soon. And then another voice — oh Heart, you're so compassionate, you have to toughen up a little.

"I figured out, like, wow, all of these things in me are fighting to have a space all the time, and it's like a dialogue going on inside of me all the time."

xps

I'm a little deflated that Vampire Weekend didn't make #1, I was looking forward to seeing Lex and LJ going apoplectic with rage.

gross

― all-seeing eye of horus (psychgawsple), Monday, February 16, 2009 10:11 PM (36 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think VW were my #3 - it's a basically flawless album

It bested Badu by 33 points? Unexpected.

Matt, I haven't given VW a fair hearing. I might have to now. After I've finished the GGD second run-through. And maybe listened to Erykah.

i will say that vampire weekend really makes you appreciate the electrodribble by comparison

Lex c'mon this is classic sympathetic interpretation. You could just as easily say that "I know how you feel" is condescending in its assumption that she understands everything that other people go through.

except when you listen to how she sings that line, you wouldn't say this at all - she's not singing it as a statement of solidarity, it's just in a sympathetic "i've been there too" sort of way. it's like lauryn hill's "don't think i haven't been in the same predicament" on 'doo wop (that thing)'.

I'm a little deflated that Vampire Weekend didn't make #1, I was looking forward to seeing Lex and LJ going apoplectic with rage.

Oh I don't think The Lex is going to be pleased it beat Erykah Badu.
xxxxx-post hah

It bested Badu by 33 points? Unexpected.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, February 16, 2009 10:14 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i take solace in badu beating it in points-per-voter

I got tired of arguing the merits of the VW album to its detractors around June of last year, so I'll just say I'm happy to see it show up at #5 (expected it to be lower).

like i think i said before, v.w. remind of they might be giants with weaker tunes and worse jokes.

remind me of...

I mean, as a piece I think Saint Dymphna pretty much perfect, there's hardly anything I'd change, even the sections where nothing much happens. But at ther same time what I especially love is the little hooks and segments and refrains, like the guitar at the end of Desert Storm, that threaten to expand into entire tracks but never do. It's like it's full of unexplored possibilies that, if they'd jammed them out, would have seen the album take on a different but no less excellent shape.

^^^this was Matt DC before he deleted it

It works really nicely as a piece, especially from the midsection onwards, and the segues, although they shine briefly, have an almost necessary brevity to them; sure, there are lots of unexplored possibilities, but they ensure that the shockwaves from each section resound beyond their own lifespan, and they do this through strong narrative grasp. The thing flows superbly.

I'm not a big fan of the VW album, but it is at worst inoffensive. I think they left their best song of it (Boston aka Ladies of Cambridge). I'll be interested to see where they go from here, even though I don't "get" them yet.

I don't know what's more painful, Fleet Foxes just beating The American Dream or Vampire Weekend doing the same with FATBE​LLYBE​LLA.

"except when you listen to how she sings that line, you wouldn't say this at all - she's not singing it as a statement of solidarity, it's just in a sympathetic "i've been there too" sort of way. it's like lauryn hill's "don't think i haven't been in the same predicament" on 'doo wop (that thing)'."

Yeah well this is the more convincing statement. But this is the way to look at it, or at least it is for me. I think that Erykah's lyrics aren't so developed that you can win arguments based on lyrical exposition alone; just stating the lyrics doesn't clearly differentiate her from India.Arie or whoever. Then again I have a knee-jerk suspicion of stuff with lyrics that politically i might agree with, because usually it just makes me doubt and even hate my own politics. The stuff that I end up liking in spite of this is always in spite of the point of the lyrics; it comes down to performance or phrasing or lyrical style (as opposed to meaning).

FTR I don't think the album comes off preachy mostly because I come away with no idea what Erykah's trying to get across whatsoever (which I could never say for the pious broadsheet writers).

^^^this was Matt DC before he deleted it

Heh, I thought I'd hold that quote over until the album actually places, but what the hell, I've put it back now.

Two of my top three picks are yet to place, I'm either going to be overjoyed or pissed off.

I'm not a big fan of the VW album, but it is at worst inoffensive.

i'm sorry but can we not call an album that adopts the music of the impoverished and then throws like a jillion upper class-signifiers into the lyrics 'inoffensive'. also, that gd northwest/ivy league accentuation the vocalist uses is offensive enough even if you ignore any of the potential social implications.

i mean, i just plain don't like their music, but doesn't it bother anyone else that they MARKET the fact that they are ivy league kids?

what I especially love is the little hooks and segments and refrains, like the guitar at the end of Desert Storm, that threaten to expand into entire tracks but never do.

otm, and i feel like i find new ones every time i listen. or maybe it's just that there's so many little eddies in the flow that i keep forgetting them until i hear them again.

the trouble with the vampire weekend is that it executes its basic concept to a tee, and that its basic concept ("hey, what do you think afrobeat's lacking? i know, a white indie boy vocalist!" UGH) is totally reprehensible. the vocalist - i refuse to call him a singer - the vocalist's strangulated yelp might be the single worst sound that a human voicebox can make.

also i checked out some of that paul simon album in the wake of all the comparisons and LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL, basically. i can't imagine why anyone wouldn't just want to hear graceland instead.

can we please not have this argument again? please please please please please please please please please please

i'm sorry but can we not call an album that adopts the music of the impoverished and then throws like a jillion upper class-signifiers into the lyrics 'inoffensive'.

By this standard, no rock music would even exist.

at least not without the input of burt_stanton

Then again I have a knee-jerk suspicion of stuff with lyrics that politically i might agree with, because usually it just makes me doubt and even hate my own politics.

i am much the same, which is why NA was so mind-blowing for me! fyi the original argument was here

^^^heard one song from this, it was really really really really really boring

Considering that like, yesterday, on this thread you’d never heard of the band and then reacted to a song someone posted from the second album, we can note this as a well-considered pronouncement

(the album is indeed full of really boring songs, but fuck, ban l____ j_____)

8 zillion xposts cos this shit goes too fast

By this standard, no rock music would even exist.

would that it were so

apart from the yeah yeah yeahs

brilliant argument sir

xxp

"i mean, i just plain don't like their music, but doesn't it bother anyone else that they MARKET the fact that they are ivy league kids?"

What should they do instead? (genuine not-baiting question) Wouldn't Ivy League kids be kind of damned regardless?

I don't think this album sounds nearly as much like afrobeat (!) or even African guitar pop as people always say. I'm not sure if this is good or bad.

adopts the music of the impoverished and then throws like a jillion upper class-signifiers into the lyrics

"hey, what do you think afrobeat's lacking? i know, a white indie boy vocalist!"

I was going to say that anyone making the straight jump from afrobeat to Vampire Weekend is missing a few crucial steps along the way but then I remembered that my life is too short to argue about race, class and Vampire Weekend on the internet, which is why I never clicked on that thread again after January 2008.

Or what Tim said.

nobody has been this blatant about it in the past, johnny fever.

and yeah, i'll give it up. i haven't bothered to peruse the band's thread yet, so i'm in the dark about the lengths to which this has been discussed already