Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

Nah, definitive proof that I'm right is how many reviews of the new one call it "a grower," which basically means they didn't like it much in the first place. (Always a red flag.)

Things you like in the first place often get real boring by the third place, tho.

I think it's fine to be a grower if you're making minimal house or dark intense folk music or something but probably not if you're Vampire Weekend. The album seems to be aiming for immediacy from what I can tell.

Which might be useful on hipster dancefloors if Vampire grooves didn't have a mysterious tendency to clumsily disentregrate almost as soon as they're established.

yes, thx. like i said up above, i think the focus by detractors on the vocals/lyrics is a little off because it doesn't address a lot of the things that people who like them say they like: the hooks and grooves and multiculti appropriations. and my problem with the hooks and grooves and appropriations is mostly that (like the vocals and lyrics) they just seem awfully glib. and glibness is not necessarily a function of privilege or whiteness or indie-ness, it's a freestanding property of its own. and it's not even a universally bad thing, there is some art i like that i would probably call glib. just not this particular variety.

like, these guys should be the ultimate "not my cup of tea"-lex music, not the ultimate "i h8 them with every fiber of my being"-lex music

― not a playa but i ilx a lot (deej), Monday, January 18, 2010 5:59 AM (5 hours ago)

don't mean to draw lex in any further but ^otm, my thoughts exactly

sounds like lex hates them for the same reason LJ hates them, but wants there to be a real reason instead of a hype reason, and so he talks about the guys voice or whatever

sounds like they both hate them for the same reason dr morbius hates anything tbh

ha!

guys i just realized something - i am a diplomat's son

im gonna say this as a v not irl wasp type but i like to think i've seen enough oc eps to footnote. there's this bit in middlesex by jeffrey eugenides where he visits one of his old-money type friend's house for the first time and he says something abt how everything seemed like it had been carefully bought with good taste and that they just had to live in it now and i think they do have this breezy feeling of everything being so easy, u kno young and rich and the world at our fingertips and "we just have to drop a few names here and there so u know what page ur on FYI." and man its seductive like i just wanna hang with these guys

fwiw OC residents are not WASPs in the sense that VW are

lol i am not that dumm

not 2 derail thread or nething but i can't stop listening to this when i should be sorting out the 2k9 poll ballot.

Yeah, they manage to sound maximalist without actually being maximalist. I see what you're saying.

― rennavate, Sunday, January 17, 2010 6:00 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is what i like about the production specifically, is that it feels really huge but there really aren't very many parts happening at any one time. they can get away with that because each sound is really good and the parts are so well-chosen, so they have room to breathe. i feel like this is the opposite of merriweather post pavilion, where most of the sounds are thin & shitty so they end up building them into this wall of busy-ness.

fwiw a Jew and a Persian are not WASPs in the sense that White Anglo-Saxon Protestants are

yeah, but feel like they are just tapping into a "life of leisure" type vibe that the wasp-ey thing works as a vehicle 4 (via "yacht rock")

a persian?!

Sure, but arch observers of WASP culture /= WASPs (just get so tired of that as an epithet for these guys)

Batmanglij was not exactly a common name on the Mayflower

yeah ppl who act all waspy shouldn't get called wasps

"preppies" just seems like a more applicable term here, that's all

i can't think of another band that has namechecked "bears" in their lyrics which i also think is awes

i dunno tho, i spose if this was a load of fuckers from donnybrook or belvedere knockin on abt trinners and kilreekil i'd wanna gouge their eyes out, but gilmore girls etc have made this a fairy tale place where goodlooking ppl get ivy league scholarships

pretty sure nobody who would understand the 1st part of that post is gonna read it

im gonna say this as a v not irl wasp type but i like to think i've seen enough oc eps to footnote. there's this bit in middlesex by jeffrey eugenides where he visits one of his old-money type friend's house for the first time and he says something abt how everything seemed like it had been carefully bought with good taste and that they just had to live in it now and i think they do have this breezy feeling of everything being so easy, u kno young and rich and the world at our fingertips and "we just have to drop a few names here and there so u know what page ur on FYI." and man its seductive like i just wanna hang with these guys

I think the one of the things usually missed about VW is that they're coming from the same perspective: as outsiders looking in on the lifestyle and being sort of fascinated by it.

I don't know what kind of class background they come from (Ezra Koenig has refused to give me his family's finical records numerous times) but on more than one occasion they've alluded to coming from backgrounds no different than other indie rockers and musicians.

If you're already on the "inside" of a cultural scene you don't have to know all the of latest shibboleths and passwords -- because you're already set and you feel entitled to belong there. The fact that Vampire Weekend spends so much time getting all the details right about the rich prep/wasp lifestyle is indicative that they're outsiders/poseurs who were close to the culture, and then took a sort of interest in it but only as outsiders. It's when you're in it but not of it that you take such a curious or ironic view of the lifestyle. The genuine rich kids that people assume Vampire Weekend to be usually have no idea.

"as outsiders looking in on the lifestyle and being sort of fascinated by it. "

^^^^ Especially true I think on "White Sky" and "Taxicab," with the former's subject looking up at buildings and imagining the interiors and who might live there, and the line on the latter about pretending to be horrified by a uniform. That second line I'm having a hard time putting into words, but to me it sounds like all kinds of layers of self-awareness and class-consciousness and awkward upward mobility, like an actual "WASP" or whatever might not blink at a valet or a doorman but an interloper might feel some need to feign discomfort so as to appear more legit.

thread filled with lots of discussion about class signifiers = music lacks serious jams IMO

Every time I walk past the university library I wonder who's in there, and whether they're reading about class signifiers.

thread filled with lots of discussion about class signifiers = music lacks serious jams IMO

― Na'vi Girls (Need Love Too) (M@tt He1ges0n), Monday, January 18, 2010 10:08 PM (9 minutes ago)

nah i'd put it more in the strokes/phoenix zone of "this seems like nothing special in its constituent parts but it adds up to something way more"

strokes at least had the good sense to rip off tom petty

Strokes never ripped off class signifiers.

class signifiers are always fun discussion - one question as yet unasked here - do new england bluebloods have a culture worth being fascinated by - a: fuck god no

next vampire weekend album should be a concept album based on "the world according to garp"

http://www.personism.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/porter-july.jpg

http://www.mitchmagee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/katz.jpg

http://errolflynn.my-king.com/header/hussey1.jpg

http://www.gilmoregirlsnews.com/files/2009/04/gilmore-girls-magic-to-do-06.jpg

"Vampire Weekend's music is rich white America's CNN" - Chuck D

i said this when "horchata" was released but THIS BAND IS TROLLING people like the lex -- w/ this album they've distilled what people hate about them and put them right out in front -- rhyming things like "horchata" and "balaclava" and having a chorus like "white sky" where he's whooping in his super high, needly falsetto -- and what it signifies to me -- and this is something i love about them -- is that they're very self-aware and cynical about the culture & criticism that surrounds them. i truly believe that they just want to be themselves -- want to wear polo and bite african music and wear phish t-shirts (and, i'm sure, adobe slabs for their girls) -- and that they disarm the intense bile of people like the lex by playing the joke on them -- i mean who would genuinely write a lyric like "lil jon, he always tells the truth".

and anyway, their music transcends all of this because it's great pop. rostam is a remarkable musician-- in two different pitchfork.tv things, the guy has written string arrangements on the spot for musicians who it seems like they just pulled in on the day of filming. and, as kevin & other people have said, they write amazing hooks, which is why it doesn't matter if he's singing "who gives a fuck about an oxford comma" or, on "white sky", literally nothing

^^^^

booming post

wait are you british kevin?

I don't know -- "White Sky" is about something. It reminds me of those Eno ambient tracks like "Drift"; the title reflects what the song sounds like.

one conundrum for me is that i like both of the very best's v.w. songs ("warm heart of africa" and their version of "cape cod kwassa kwassa") a lot better than any actual v.w. songs. i don't even mind ezra's voice on "warm heart." i don't love it, but it doesn't get in the way of the rest of the song enough to put me off. which makes me think again that v.w.'s problem -- or my problem with v.w. -- is really mostly in their grooves. and i say this as a defender of sublime, fr god's sake. there's a difference between light and lite, or sprightly and Sprite-ly, and vampire weekend's on the wrong side to my ears. listen to the difference between the original groove of "cape cod" and what the very best mix does with it, and that's pretty much my problem with v.w. in a nutshell.

Talking about the music in a Vampire Weekend thread is technically derailing, Mr. Mothra.

xp to alfred imo "white sky" is like "cape cod kwassa kwassa" in that it has little hints of "meaning" -- specifically in the case of "white sky" the second verse ("the sins of pride and envy") -- but it functions as a portrait or a scene of upper-class white culture as told by a detached-- and as i read it, a cynical and bemused-- narrator. in general though what i said about "white sky" in my post was meant to frame their hook prowess as the main selling point of the band

otm

i don't buy that they're masters of the pop hook at all - i heard the whole of the first album, nothing stuck with me, and this is what i wrote about "horchata" on the jukebox, which is a bit more considered than the genuine hatred i have for them:

East Coast privilege should surely be a little bit more interesting than references to ethnic cuisine over a pale, prissy take on Jon Brion. “Horchata” is a woefully underwritten, melodically slight song that evokes nothing whatsoever; Vampire Weekend seem unable to funnel their precocity towards any sort of purpose, undermining their clever-cleverness somewhat.

i mean, yeah, what tipsy said earlier, it's all so slight and nothingy - it doesn't actually evoke upper-class privileged lifestyles, it's a bunch of signifiers that add up to nothing. i would agree w/cunga that they don't come across as authentically waspish or whatever, and i'd imagine that they'd just sound really weird to people who do live that lifestyle.

What lifestyle are you talking about? This seems to be the slippery bit here.

I don't know what to tell you lex, there were tons of hooks on the debut!

True. Not on the new one, though.

Actually I don't know why I'm bothering to argue this seeing as with Vampire Weekend you either:

- Like them and like their schtick, or find it endearing/evocative

- Like them and can overlook their annoying schtick while finding it occasionally evocative (ie me)

- Dislike both

But there is essentially nothing going on here that can enable people of persuasion 1 and 2 to explain to people of persuasion 3 what they like about it. It seems so obvious, but then it isn't. It's like trying to explain why watching people walking into a lamppost is funny.

watching people walking into lamp posts is not funny?