ive only heard the 10 song cdr
― jhøshea, Monday, 28 January 2008 14:14 (sixteen years ago) link
whereas Paul Simon's last 45 was SLAMMIN xp
― blueski, Monday, 28 January 2008 14:15 (sixteen years ago) link
[ban me] gave the first Bloc Party album an 8.9, so the praise for this album feels slightly muted
― da croupier, Monday, 28 January 2008 15:14 (sixteen years ago) link
sorry, NABISCO. I didn't realize using the first name of the writer of an article on Pitchfork could get me banned, sorry!
Can I type the word Jess? Scott?
― da croupier, Monday, 28 January 2008 15:15 (sixteen years ago) link
hmmm
well this is amusing
― da croupier, Monday, 28 January 2008 15:16 (sixteen years ago) link
[nabisco] louis jagger
― jhøshea, Monday, 28 January 2008 15:22 (sixteen years ago) link
waht u can write louis jagger now? this is an outrage!
― jhøshea, Monday, 28 January 2008 15:23 (sixteen years ago) link
[nabisco] [ban me]
lol
what happened was someone fucking w/[nabisco] or something?
― jhøshea, Monday, 28 January 2008 15:25 (sixteen years ago) link
I wasn't the proto-Jagger: that thread get revived, and someone (Heave Ho?) kept pasting in my name, and at some point I think mods decided it was easier to just put on the Jagger-filter than keep coming back and snipping it out. At this point it would probably be safe to remove the filter and just go back and clean up the thread.
― nabisco, Monday, 28 January 2008 17:15 (sixteen years ago) link
in my head i keep hearing "ban me" as "marry me" a la maebe funke.
― Jordan, Monday, 28 January 2008 17:16 (sixteen years ago) link
every thread on ILX about a new "indie" band or movie should start with the wikipedia article on the narcissism of small differences
― max, Monday, 28 January 2008 17:16 (sixteen years ago) link
Well, here's one non-small tension you inevitably see between the criticism and the message-board talk: critics have some level of responsibility to talk about whether something's good at what it does, while message-board haters can lay in slams about what it doesn't. There was a line that wound up getting cut from the end of that Pitchfork review, saying that criticizing Vampire Weekend for not being dirtier or bloodier or more progressive is "like having someone cure Alzheimer's and complaining that she should have done cancer instead." One of the parts where this band wins is that they're very convincingly good at what they do do.
(P.S.: It is 100% true that Bloc Party's review should not have a higher rating than this.)
― nabisco, Monday, 28 January 2008 17:32 (sixteen years ago) link
what they -do- do well is be boring, bland, and beige. so, they do succeed very well at that.
― burt_stanton, Monday, 28 January 2008 17:49 (sixteen years ago) link
It's rare indeed that I find myself nodding in agreement with a Pfork review, but I thought you did an excellent job there, N.
― mike t-diva, Monday, 28 January 2008 17:50 (sixteen years ago) link
do reviewers give the ratings at pfork?
― Mr. Que, Monday, 28 January 2008 17:53 (sixteen years ago) link
did anyone catch them on the tour going on right now? they are comming by me next month....worth checking out?
― gman, Monday, 28 January 2008 17:59 (sixteen years ago) link
Yes, although editors sometimes do get in their ear about that along the way. And obviously we'll often get an idea of what someone wants to say about a record before assigning it to them.
xpost
― scottpl, Monday, 28 January 2008 18:00 (sixteen years ago) link
heard the whole thing now, for my sins, and i'll stand by the first 3 tracks; then well, i dunno if 'cape code etc etc' is meant to be winsomeley self-deprecating or whatever with the benneton and "unnatural, peter gabriel" refs but it sounds unbelievably smarmy whichever way, and the chamberpop thing after that is just vile and everything you suspected. after that the rest doesn't recover.
yeah i don't know why i'm on this thread either. can we get on with the tweeo walcott gags already or what?
― r|t|c, Monday, 28 January 2008 18:13 (sixteen years ago) link
Koenig is a detail guy Koenig is a detail guy Koenig is a detail guy Koenig is a detail guy Koenig is a detail guy
GOOD WORK NABISCO
― r|t|c, Monday, 28 January 2008 18:17 (sixteen years ago) link
(Ha, yes, to be clear: my saying the Bloc Party should be lower was a mea culpa, not an insinuation that it was anyone else's doing.)
(P.S. I love how suddenly in the last week this record has started bring amazing moral judgments out of people who don't enjoy it, accusations that these are bad people for making ... lyrically inoffensive peppy pop music. Which is something I was half-expecting, because the whole thing is that this band seems actively HAPPY, which will read to people they annoy as being smug and superior. This is kind of strange: if they came off less tidy and shiny and pleased with themselves -- if Koenig seemed miserable or something -- I imagine they'd get less of this reaction, which is kind of insane.)
xpost - I have no idea what what means but thank you?
― nabisco, Monday, 28 January 2008 18:19 (sixteen years ago) link
The type of afro-pop that they're jacking has always seemed a little corny and rhythmically dull to me, so I've got no interest in a whitened up version + indie pop.
― Jordan, Monday, 28 January 2008 18:27 (sixteen years ago) link
the whole thing is that this band seems actively HAPPY
which is offensive to pretty much the whole indie rokk value system of the last 10 years
― gabbneb, Monday, 28 January 2008 18:36 (sixteen years ago) link
You know "I Know What I Know," off Graceland, where it talks about the cinematographer's party and the Fulbright scholarship? I get the feeling that Vampire Weekend think that's REALLY FUCKING CLEVER to mix uptown intellectual horseshit (see "Oxford Comma") with afrobeat. This is why people think they're smug. I just think they're young. If these guys are under 25, I'm gonna give them benefit of the doubt.
― Whiney G. Weingarten, Monday, 28 January 2008 18:55 (sixteen years ago) link
hmmm [banh mi]
― Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:00 (sixteen years ago) link
Whiney, what "intellectual horseshit" is in "Oxford Comma?" It's a song picking on exactly the kind of smugness/privilege stuff people accuse VW of having, which I suspect Koenig was conscious of whenever he wrote it.
― nabisco, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:03 (sixteen years ago) link
xposts
I love how suddenly in the last week this record has started bring amazing moral judgments out of people who don't enjoy it, accusations that these are bad people for making ... lyrically inoffensive peppy pop music.
Ha! I am all too familiar with people making those kinds of judgments. They are heretics, theirs is a false theology, and it will cast them into perdition.
― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:04 (sixteen years ago) link
I get the feeling that Vampire Weekend think that's REALLY FUCKING CLEVER to mix uptown intellectual horseshit (see "Oxford Comma") with afrobeat.
yeah, I can't imagine uptown intellectual horseshit just coming naturally to some Columbia grads or their authentically being really into 'afrobeat' or anything
― gabbneb, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:04 (sixteen years ago) link
i mean, it's not like one of them was a summer intern at the OED
― gabbneb, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:05 (sixteen years ago) link
they should NOT be themselves
the only thing I don't like about 'em is the music is so god awfully boring, and boring shit makes me angry. I think people might resent them because they're Ivy League kids in NYC who've obviously had really comfortable, easy lives, and to a lot of people struggling in NYC that = grhuargargg. Reminds me of the Strokes backlash of 02.
― burt_stanton, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:07 (sixteen years ago) link
i don't know whether i should be amused or bemused about the extent to which people are willing to regard this whole thing as intensely calculated. these are dudes who play songs based on a self-mocking-horror flick the singer essayed on a lark.
― gabbneb, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:08 (sixteen years ago) link
xpost - (This is what I meant about Cheever and playing it both ways, obviously: he can act skeptical and incisive about prep privilege from right within its ranks.) (Note that that's not any kind of surprising new trick -- actually I'd say its most frequent use is on rap records.)
Really curious what the "intellectual horseshit" is, though; all we know is it's allegedly located in the one song that actually pretends to be anti-intellectual! ("Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?")
xpost Burt you've posted like 15 times "this is boring, I'm bored now," which is ... boring, I'm bored now; plus in the grand scale of things it's really hard for me to suss out how having gone to Columbia is somehow just beyond the line of objectionability, as opposed to the million NYC indie kids who went to Oberlin or Brown but wear dirtier-looking clothing so it's not an issue.
― nabisco, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:10 (sixteen years ago) link
Ivy League kids in NYC who've obviously had really comfortable, easy lives
Is that obvious? I don't know these dudes' bios, but I don't think everybody who goes to Columbia obviously has had a really comfortable, easy life. I guess it depends on what your basis of comparison is though.
― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:11 (sixteen years ago) link
Oh, I didn't know that. That's interesting.
My statement is more about why people don't like em, which is more about perception than fact anyway
― Whiney G. Weingarten, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:14 (sixteen years ago) link
i really feel like i want to hear this now, i liked the yeasayer album. bring on the benetton, i say. white dudes imitating peter gabriel and kate bush is better than... other options
― gff, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:16 (sixteen years ago) link
yeah, I take 'Oxford Comma' as an anti-manners song (at britishes' expense, which I would think, but in a sorta Jane Austen manner). While I guess it does literally attack a class-pretender, overall it's attacking the pretense of class - a relax, we're all in this together, er, vibe.
― gabbneb, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:18 (sixteen years ago) link
the yeasayers album I like a little better. the oxford comma thing is probably more about the writing/publishing/journalism types in NYC... over here some people prefer it, some don't, and there's always a debate on whether to use it or not. it'd be like a song about em dashes.
― burt_stanton, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:21 (sixteen years ago) link
Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma? I climbed to Dharamsala too I did I met the highest lama His accent sounded fine to me, to me
I mean, how great is that?
― gabbneb, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:22 (sixteen years ago) link
Not very.
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:26 (sixteen years ago) link
well I done bin told
I think it's pretty good for a kid of modest pretension. So's the kumbaya of "No excuse to be so callous; Dress yourself in bleeding madras; Charm your way across the Khyber Pass."
― gabbneb, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:31 (sixteen years ago) link
dress yourself in bleeding madras?????????
― Mr. Que, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:33 (sixteen years ago) link
This is what I've been saying forever: lost in the hyperbole of message-boarding is the fact that not everything is going to be the best thing ever or the worst thing ever. It should still be OK for people to form bands and write some songs without being microanalyzed for their background, influences, and agenda. The PFork review captures this sentiment perfectly.
― call all destroyer, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:34 (sixteen years ago) link
I donwloaded this off Derek ages ago but have only just, prompted, vanity-style, by Matt DC's mention of me in his post way up where, got around to listening to it. And I like it. Nicely organised! Haha, it is very sweet, and spacious, and gentle. It's just... music? I wouldn't listen to it for the sake of it being "afropop". I'd listen to it because it's got some great sounds and melodies and rhythms and vocals. Nice strings, too. (Looking at it in Audacity, there's shitloads of space. Niiiiiice.) I'm gonna go and buy a real copy of this, and without fear. The brevity of the songs stops it veering full-on into Paul Simon / Peter Gabriel / Sting wankywank. I think. It's just good odd-pop, aye? The lightness of touch is what confirms it to me as pop.
― Scik Mouthy, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:45 (sixteen years ago) link
Low expectation havin' motherfuckers.
― Bodrick III, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:47 (sixteen years ago) link
Actually, to be fair to Whiney, I should note that the one clear indie "intellectual" streak to Koenig's writing is that he definitely exists in a collegiate space of references to history and geography and information about the world, as much as information about the life that's right in front of you: serial commas, the Khyber Pass, the Mansard roof and the admiralty, kefir on keffiyehs, etc. Which is totally natural for someone recently out of college, and a natural match for a collegiate audience well beyond pricey Ivy League campuses.
― nabisco, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:48 (sixteen years ago) link
I donwloaded this off Derek ages ago
Psst, this isn't the Stylus board.
― jaymc, Monday, 28 January 2008 19:53 (sixteen years ago) link