Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

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??

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?

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Tuesday, January 19, 2010 12:49 AM (2 minutes ago)

uh, this is pretty squarely situated in the music which is way lusher than almost any indie rock, its ethno tourism feels like an expensive holiday, along with chillwave it does feel like the most explicit balearic sound in recent indie rock with all the connotations

hey dudes vampire weekend sound totally indie, & thats ok

just like dave matthews... of montreal!

, this is pretty squarely situated in the music which is way lusher than almost any indie rock

indeed. ethno-tourism + stately string arrangements a la M79 or the delicate pianos on Taxi Cab or the harpsichord elsewhere code as fairly upper class and lush.

just like dave matthews... in montreal!

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

i understand and sympathize with why it is important for people to believe that. but play them back to back and i can make a much better case for vampire weekend aesthetic overlap with DMB than with sonic youth or pavement or whatever "indie" godfather someone might choose.

what is the most VW-like DMB album?

^this

i mean, when you say glamour are you looking for conspicuous consumption type lushness? because i feel like glamour as it codes in R&B and rap and glamour as it codes in Ivy League VW type circles function very differently.

the flashy and in-yr-face glamour of a lot of R&B that I love seems tied to a similar impulse in expensive-sounding/looking rap. success is proved by ostentatious display of wealth etc.

whereas the old-money new england shtick is that one's insane wealth need not be commented on or flashed about (as that would be gauche) - it just needs to float in the background, exist, infect the entire aura of the music. (and VW aren't totally successful at this - per their status as outsiders/interlopers they DO talk about the signifiers when real members of this social class wouldn't bother or think about it, but the music does manage to pull off the understated glamour of wealth quite well, imo)

i dont think iv ever knowingly heard dave matthews band except that like every single room raiders contestant ever had their cds

Under the Table and Dreaming clearly.

dont really know what dmb sounds like tbh

why r they so bad n h8d

i feel like glamour as it codes in R&B and rap and glamour as it codes in Ivy League VW type circles function very differently.

^^^ Tom's of Maine all up in Ezra's grill.

"I Did It," bro.

wtf does that mean?

The "this sounds like that and no-one likes that so clearly this is also aesthetically bankrupt" argument has limited facility I think.

I see the argument that VW sound a bit like Dave Matthews Band but that doesn't mean that you can't like one and not like the other. If VW annoy listeners I doubt it's in much the same way as "What Would You Say" does, for example. No one resemblance has a monopoly on an artist's effect or effectiveness.

this is maybe OT im really interested why some of you are calling out "horchata" and "balaklava" as two of the big ruling-class signifiers here--is it just that theyre big/foreign words?

there's something so facile about the whole project, so thimble-deep not just in their ideas but in their relationship to their own music, that it mostly sounds to me like small rocks skipping across a small stream. and not skipping far, either -- the disappointing kind of throws where no matter how you angle it, you get two jumps and a plop. i don't see a way into this music for myself. i don't hear or feel anything to make me stick around. but the fact that other people do, i mean, i allow the possibility that it's simply not on my wavelength. but boy is it not.

would like to re-quote this as being totally OTM for me and how I get this album. as someone who tunes out the lyrics to almost everything I listen to there's something self-consciously 'small' about their arrangements, or glib as tipsymothra said. I don't even know what a horchata is and I went to an ivy league school. I suppose this should be pushing certain buttons for me but it's not. oh well back to the new pantha du prince or whatever

this is maybe OT im really interested why some of you are calling out "horchata" and "balaklava" as two of the big ruling-class signifiers here--is it just that theyre big/foreign words?

― max, Monday, January 18, 2010 8:22 PM (9 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

my question from like 1m posts ago^ plz answer

I didn't know what "cognoscenti" meant when I first heard Bryan Ferry use it in a song, and I went to private school for eighteen years. Oh well.

i always think what is so funny on these threads is where ppl who don't like whatever album decide its not "all that" and wish they could "open our eyes" to its shittiness or in this case "DMB-ness"

this is maybe OT im really interested why some of you are calling out "horchata" and "balaklava" as two of the big ruling-class signifiers here--is it just that theyre big/foreign words?

― max, Monday, January 18, 2010 8:22 PM (9 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

my question from like 1m posts ago^ plz answer

― supra-max (ice cr?m), Monday, January 18, 2010 8:24 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

for realz though everyone is talking like weve all agreed that these guys are tossing off WASP signifiers left and right--but im listening to the lyrics now and mostly it seems like theyre tossing off... big words

this is maybe OT im really interested why some of you are calling out "horchata" and "balaklava" as two of the big ruling-class signifiers here--is it just that theyre big/foreign words?

― max, Monday, January 18, 2010 7:22 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i've been singling those two out because the song was the first one released for this album and also because it's such a ridiculous rhyme that it seems to me to be specifically designed to inflame people who criticized them circa their first album -- it's more along the lines of the lil jon lyric than anything involving class

mostly it just seems like they're tossing off

a mexican drink & a face mask, a milky drink & a scarf

mostly it just seems like they're tossing off

― Na'vi Girls (Need Love Too) (M@tt He1ges0n), Monday, January 18, 2010 7:29 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest

^yes