Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

OK, so I know, right? has basically made the same point while I've been typing but anyway…

Lex, surely you must see an equivalence between your incomprehension/dislike of most indie-rock tropes and yelpy vocals and many indie fans' incomprehension/dislike of most R&B tropes and melisma, etc. Yet you persist in claiming that your blindspot is justified while the indie equivalent is a heinous crime bordering on racism. It's ridiculous.

santogold has a discernible personality at least xps

You also complained recently about people who like R&B when, or because, it reminds them of IDM or other non-R&B genres. Equally, you only like indie bands (generally female fronted) who eschew most indie mannerisms. Same thing.

I was going to point out that of his list of "indie rock" bands he liked, the majority of them pull influence from far outside the typical indie rock world.

what if i dislike vampire weekend because they remind me of the dave matthews band? does that get us sufficiently far out of the indie ghetto?

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.

big signposts words like "horchata" and "benneton" are red herrings set up by the band imo -- when they want to evoke upper-class privileged lifestyles -- like they do in "white sky" --- the writing is much more abstract and artistic

a big part of why i like this band is that i was midway thru a tibor kalman/benneton ad obsession when the first album hit and just that reference on capecodkk made them immediately feel like an aural equiv

criticisms about their arrangements are valid i think -- that would be an argument about taste that would be pointless -- but i will say again that i think discussions such as these help to underrate them as musicians qua musicians -- songs like "m79" and "horchata" operate on a musical level above nearly every other indie-- and especially "mannered" pop indie bands like grizzly bear and dirty projectors-- act on VW's level

I don't totally get what makes Vampire Weekend indie outside the fact it gets reviewed in Pitchfork. It's really hooky, poppy and has what sounds to me like a bunch of pop-punk/ska sounds in it. The concert really reminded me of a ska show (I went to a ton as a teenager) and the band members even did some pogo'ing at one point. I even caught one person skanking so...

xpost. VW signposts aren't really signposts at all if they're not widely known. If I wanted to evoke WASPy privilege there are things I'd reach for before horchata, the oxford comma and mansard roofs (all of which I had to look up, by the way). Their vocabulary is so playfully arcane - it's not "about" any one thing.

Arrangement on M79 is tremendous.

Equally, you only like indie bands (generally female fronted) who eschew most indie mannerisms

= who can sing in tune

Ezra definitely sings in tune. That's not even up for debate.

I think Dorian's post is kind of OTM and also kind of unfair in that a) the Lex obviously does this and b) ALL critics do this in ways they often don't acknowledge, usually because they don't make it so visible.

If I were Alex I'd avoid talking about indie music *at all* in print, or even on the internet, because the alternative, while fine when you're a young writer, puts you directly on the path to becoming some kind of ranting Simon Reynolds-style King Canute tosser, and no one wants that.

and they use Auto-Tune!

Equally, you only like indie bands (generally female fronted) who eschew most indie mannerisms

= who can sing in tune

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Tuesday, January 19, 2010 12:19 AM (32 seconds ago)

"i like the roots bc at least they play real instruments"

"These rappers can't sing or play an instrument. They're just talking over other people's records."

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

That's probably why The Thrills sang about Santa Cruz and not Blackrock.

dorian i'm gonna go to bed bc this thread doesn't need both of us

horchata is a mexican rice drink

No, I'm going to bed. You're better at this.

But one last thing…

"I think Dorian's post is kind of OTM and also kind of unfair in that a) the Lex obviously does this and b) ALL critics do this in ways they often don't acknowledge, usually because they don't make it so visible."

I don't think that's true, though. Like anybody I have my preferences but I don't turn attack-dog on anyone who doesn't like my favourite genres. It's crazy to expect your own prejudices to be echoed by everyone else. What I don't understand is why lex doesn't revel in his passionately held, nonconsensual tastes - enjoy the fact that he doesn't like the same records as every other critic - rather than throwing a fit when a P4K poll overlooks Cassie or whoever.

Sorry, this thread is about VW, not lex. I'll stop now.

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

That's probably why The Thrills sang about Santa Cruz and not Blackrock.

― ecuador_with_a_c, Tuesday, January 19, 2010 12:22 AM (3 minutes ago)

wait who are you, like i know you're around 4e but

xp mordy otm, they're only indie insofar as they're on an indie label

one qualm i have with the new album is some of the songs seem too short. i keep waiting for a bridge but they never come; i figure it's gotta be a deliberate aesthetic choice but i can get with the "underwritten" criticism in that respect. it's nothing that ruins the record for me tho, the hooks and arrangements make up for it

xp lex ezra is pretty objectively a good singer imo, that's not gonna work

its kindof an example of how indie as a discourse swallows what it likes in this weird way (ive been shot down on this board for liking sugababes bc they were indie but diff times i guess) so that i think a big part of indie music's critical hegemony is partly due to the fact that a lot of what indie music likes or adopts gets relabelled indie (i mean VW is kinda from more of a soft rock via phil collins dad rock lineage maybe which isn't the british invasion>punk>indie continuum)

turning this whole thing into a referendum on indie rock or lex's alienation from it seems deeply unfair to both indie rock and lex. it is entirely possible to both know and like a whole lot of indie rock and still think vampire weekend is sort of terrible. just as it's possible to like a lot of indie rock and psych rock and tribal-brother-love-freak-rock and think merriweather post pavilion is bollocks. nobody has to like vampire weekend to like "indie rock," thank god.

Like no one would call Paul Simon indie or an indie forefather and they're clearly influenced heavily by Graceland.

pual simon, indie as fuk

yeah i did want to put a disclaimer into my posts that it wasn't specifically bc lex doesn't like this or MPP but bc most of his objections to indie rock seem to be based on stuff like distortion, atonality and DIY aesthetics which seems like h8ing on techno for being repetitive

The problem isn't that lex dislikes Vampire Weekend, the problem is that his reasons just aren't jiving with reality (i.e. Ezra can't sing on tune, which is patently untrue) and that lex is throwing up the same kind of arguments that seem to throw him into a tizzy when used as reasons why someone may not like rnb.

i'm usually with lex on these kinds of things i think, which is why i'm so baffled that he hates them so much. i agree micachu should be thrown down a flight of stairs but like, the dudes in VW can legitimately write hooks and sing in tune and are capable of skilled arrangements

just like dave matthews...

um don't u like of montreal?

xp

by and large I can't stand Animal Collective, and have written so many times, but still think lex isn't expressing himself very well.

um don't u like of montreal?

xp

― plaxico (I know, right?), Monday, January 18, 2010 7:38 PM (1 minute ago)

yeah and i'd say the same about them... ?

(to be fair, vw remind me more of rusted root than DMB. a lateral distinction at best.)

i think for various reasons that animal collective are much more worthy of the lex's ire & bile than vampire weekend

just like dave matthews...

― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Monday, January 18, 2010 7:38 PM (1 minute ago)

well if those were the three or four criteria that anyone judged music by, you'd have a point. breaking shit down into little categories like that threatens to swerve into geir-level x's and o's-tedium, i know, i'm just saying i think they're capable musicians, as are plenty of artists/bands that just arent my thing

by and large I can't stand Animal Collective, and have written so many times, but still think lex isn't expressing himself very well.

― Hell is other people. In an ILE film forum. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, January 19, 2010 12:40 AM (2 minutes ago)

maybe iv misread ur taste as well, but rnt u not at all interested in most of the stuff these guys are about anyway?

just like dave matthews...

― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Monday, January 18, 2010 7:38 PM (1 minute ago)

well if those were the three or four criteria that anyone judged music by, you'd have a point. breaking shit down into little categories like that threatens to swerve into geir-level x's and o's-tedium, i know, i'm just saying i think they're capable musicians, as are plenty of artists/bands that just arent my thing

― guardian nagle (k3vin k.), Tuesday, January 19, 2010 12:43 AM (3 seconds ago)

not if everyone didn't keep behaving like it was that easy

they are in no way similar to dave matthews -- like, at all

it doesn't actually evoke upper-class privileged lifestyles, it's a bunch of signifiers that add up to nothing.

The nothingness and empty signifiers are very much a part, if not the essence, of the lifestyle! All of this wealth going hand in hand with shallow solipsism. That's what makes it so evocative to me

The other thing is that Vampire Weekend's idea of decadence and wealth seems so grounded in the 80s, with the idea of yuppies, yacht rock, polo shirts, Reaganism etc. Their shtick is kind of like Roxy Music's in the seventies, where that band also went back twenty years to borrow dated ideas about culture, decadence, wealth from the fifties and re-used it pretty ironically. That comparison is very half-thought-out right now (*dodges thrown rock*) but there's something to the way both bands appropriated elements of glamor and signifiers from the past and re-used them.

Like no one would call Paul Simon indie or an indie forefather and they're clearly influenced heavily by Graceland.

I actually think of Simon as being a great proto-type for a lot of modern indie habits but whatevs

yeah i was going to say i think a lot of people would call paul simon an "indie forefather"

he was on the garden state soundtrack dont forget

his first album is pretty much the archetype of indie quirky singer songwriter

really i meant "max music"

elements of glamor

that's it! that's what's fucking missing - surely any attempt to tap into or evoke privilege should have some glamour to it? but in all the visuals, vw just look like any old britpop band tbh - if you tuned out the lyrics would you even get a class dimension from them?

simon and garf songs in the Graduate -> Pop music in cinema -> Wes Anderson -> VW

Paul Simon's first album is smarter and more rhythmically deft than a lot of "indie" records.

maybe iv misread ur taste as well, but rnt u not at all interested in most of the stuff these guys are about anyway?

who are "these guys"?

The madlib-y aspect of the position Lex is taking here that i find most troubling is not so much its blanket dismissve quality but that it uses the exact same language as the worst R&B-haters - talking about "aesthetic standards", objecting to entire across-the-genre vocal approaches, complaining about a lack of personality, saying the songs are ultimately empty and slight and "nothingy", defending the right to cast judgment by reference to enjoyment of an absolute minority of artists for usually atypical reasons.

I'm not saying the argument can't be right in one instance and wrong in another - I'm saying the argument itself is a bad argument that has little if any standing when made by a genre-skeptic. Which is why I'm pretty much never interested in the aesthetic judgment of genre-skeptics (w/r/t that genre at least)- the madlib nature of their arguments mean that the arguments are always wrong and mostly derivative. At least with dubstep, which Lex complains I'm unreasonably harsh on, I listen to and like a whole heap of it, including some very generic stuff, and try to think as precisely as possible about what it is that I have issues with when it does leave me cold, and how it could be better.

Or to put it another way: as a rule of thumb, if when you listen to a piece of music you dislike, you can't really say how the artist could improve it so as to be doing pretty much the same thing but much better, then that's less a sign that the music is irredeemable and more a sign that you have no business passing judgment on it in a public setting.

that's it! that's what's fucking missing - surely any attempt to tap into or evoke privilege should have some glamour to it? but in all the visuals, vw just look like any old britpop band tbh - if you tuned out the lyrics would you even get a class dimension from them?

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Monday, January 18, 2010 6:49 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

what do you think kids who go to ivy league schools listen to??