Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride

Saw them at Barclays in fall 2013 and they were fucking great. Obviously can't speak for the new lineup but I really loved that show - can't beat this setlist:

Cousins
White Sky
Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
Diane Young
Unbelievers
Holiday
Step
Horchata
Everlasting Arms
Finger Back
California English
A-Punk
Boston (Ladies of Cambridge)
Ya Hey
Don't Lie
Song 2 (Blur cover)
Campus
Oxford Comma
Giving Up the Gun
Obvious Bicycle
---
Hannah Hunt
One (Blake's Got a New Face)
Walcott

so they played all their songs lol

haha almost! no problem for me, they don't have a bad song imo. would've loved to have heard Bryn tho but I can't complain.

Sky Ferreira and Solange opened. I got there for SF and there were maybe 300 people in the whole arena. this was a month before Night Time, My Time came out. she was great, I saw her perform again two months later to a rapturous sold out 9:30 Club. Barclays crowd was still kinda thin during Solange but VW packed it, pretty sure they sold it out.

Saw them in 2008, 2011, 2012, each time fantastic, even in 2008 when I was scowling at the idea of "Vampire Weekend" seconds before they went on stage.

I love that they’ve kept the same stupid name this whole time

Each time I listen to "Harmony Hall" I like it about twice as much as I did before, and I've listened to it 5 times so I'm really high on it right now

I haven't caught up with the thread yet, but I just heard the single for the first time and I'm assuming I'm not the first to comment that it sounds like Paul Simon fronting Happy Mondays. And yet it works! (Or, alternatively, of course it works.)

yeah this is one hell of a grower

yeah, it's similar to "step" in that way for me, which i was mystified by when i first heard it (souls of mischief?), but it eventually fell into place.

I mean, a lot of people are saying "this song sounds great despite recalling the corny piano work of Movin' On Up and Bittersweet Symphony and etc." but I still unironically love that stuff so this is pretty much hitting the spot for me

Bittersweet Symphony has pianos?

oh maybe not but it does that same kinda thing with the chords rising and falling, i'm not a music theorist maaaaaaaaan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlkTVMMkCP4

Ezra's pancakes look delicious.

The lyrics seem a bit nothingy by Koenig standards, and the recycling of the "I don't want to live like this..." line is distracting. But musically it sounds pretty nice. B+

more open-shirted Ezra, please

Alfred, please, he’s a married man.

These guys are ironically kind of cool in how effortless and disinterested they are about being cool. They are making dadrock, nay grandparock at this point and it’s so sincere that you can’t bring it down.

o. nate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L2PLEUlOuM

I can't fully explain it but I am really creeped out by Ezra Koenig, it's a very visceral reaction. I don't know why but I get very passive-aggressive vibes from him, like he's unerringly nice but actually a shit. maybe he just reminds me of some asshole I knew in college. I can't pin it down. I actually listened to this band for a few years before I even saw a photo or video of him, and someone afterward it hasn't been the same. I recognize this is irrational.

He looks like a fratboy and a nerd at the same time.

Also has some man/boy features to his face... like some greek statue.

video is worth it for the shot of ariel rechtshaid using a vibraslap

Koenig definitely carries himself like a person who’s never had a single bad thing happen to him in his entire life, I understand how that could be unnerving.

Ah ! I’m not sure about this video but that vibraslap shot is great indeed ! The shirtless/hairy chest is disturbing though. A hairy rock aspect that doesn’t compute with his clean/pop image or something !

By the way, if it’s a couple of new tracks each month, we should be close to getting new ones within a few days.

And also about that video, at first I was expected him to start making sushis or some other japanese cooking like in the cooking scene in Isle of Dogs. Maybe because of the initial japanese influence around the album...

https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5c7fed805cd269479978da50/master/pass/VWCover.jpg

hideous

That can't be real

is Sony Music the title?

jfc

Wow

so i guess they decided to have a purposefully butt-ugly cover as a joke? commentary? on how stylish all of their previous covers have been?

honestly the kerning/font size of the album title is the most offensive thing to me here

ahah the super basic/lo-fi earth picture.
the cover has a 80s world music style though.

Can't get the two new songs to stream yet :(

they seem to be here https://www.stereogum.com/2034317/vampire-weekend-sunflower-feat-steve-lacy-big-blue/music/

They’re on spotify

"Big Blue" is great. "Sunflower" sounds like a B-side.

The production on « Sunflower » is pretty low-fi too !

These two songs sound more like album tracks than singles and the production is nowhere near « harmony hall ».
I might miss the lush production approach of Rostam...

find it really hard to feel anything about any of the songs released so far except that "sunflower" seems bad

i know y'all love "harmony hall," it's cool

i think this release strategy was a bad idea

these are fun imo

these are ok and i like "big blue" a fair amount but they're both pretty weird single choices

they’re clearly having fun w the rollout and not taking it too seriously. im here for vdubs‘ dgaf era

For anyone who bought compilation CDs in longboxes in the late 1980s, the cover of the new @vampireweekend album is the BIGGEST MOOD POSSIBLE. pic.twitter.com/VTLtyqIapr

— Andy Greenwald (@andygreenwald) March 6, 2019

English, please?

I like both songs, short and nice! I think this is gonna be my kind of album, except for the cover

whoa, finally listened to these new songs and they fucking rule. Much more excited about them and this album than HH & 2021. which I thought were fine, but these songs confirm my suspicions this is going to be a double album in spirit, discursive and messy, mannered but much more relaxed, 'dgaf' Is otm