Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

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

Brian Eno's from Suffolk, and as far as I know no one's complained that he rhymed "logistics" with "mystics" -- and used "heuristics" in the same line. Words are cool.

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

― max, Tuesday, January 19, 2010 1:28 AM (41 seconds ago)

benneton/"sell your paintings at the united nations"/louis vuitton/"hyannisport is a ghetto"/"you spilt keffir on your keffiyeh"

ok but the last one no

Indictment on the world that "keffiyeh" might be thought of as a WASP signifier.

its more the combo tho

cf ethno tourism

benneton/"sell your paintings at the united nations"/louis vuitton/"hyannisport is a ghetto"/"you spilt keffir on your keffiyeh"

― plaxico (I know, right?), Monday, January 18, 2010 8:33 PM (54 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

those are all from the last album!

and if were being pedantic only benneton and hyannisport are WASP signifiers. and only those two + louis vuitton are privilege signifiers.

in december studying logistics
i look psychotic googling 'heuristics'

loool

I am a little surprised to see how much certain people here are making of this. Amiable guys+hooks, (if you buy it anyway), ok. I understand the semi-moral arguments about privilege&style in terms of how ppl relate to them, that's all good, but I'm not sure about the idea they're some incredibly welcome breath of fresh air.

The extent to which their cultural and self-awareness is getting championed makes me wonder what ideas you guys have about less swagsome indie or whatever's made by ppl in the VW demographic. I enjoy some of their hooks and namedropping, but not for what it ISN'T, yknow? Picking up deej's points cos they were specific&he's been sound elsewhere:

they dont pretend that indie has some sort of access to the avant garde that other genres dont, they dont pretend to be more 'progressive' or that they're a part of any real zeitgeist other than their own style, in fact theres LESS of a sense of 'power dynamics' at play w/ there music than I get from the praise for like MIA or dubstep or even animal collective

Which is partly about the discourse and fans and partly about the music, ok, and:

I feel like their music is actually way more aware of the issue of PRIVILEGE than music that purports to be all interconnected global music of the future but really... displays a lack of awareness of how that music functions in its original context

Really? I don't really know what I think of this. dj/rupture is consciously straddling genres&it makes sense in that context but he's unusual. Generally those dynamics&lack of awareness is something fans&critics are guilty of so it seems like a weird thing to pick up about a band.

like at the time there was a lot of handwringing abt how ppl in the west wearing keffiyehs had gone from "political empathy with palestine" to "you can get them in neon pink now"

ethno tourism maybe.

i dont really have a dog in this fight anyway, i am just interested in the way all the midwestern/southern/irish/british/australian ppl on this thread are reading WASP into the band. my take is that if you replace "rich" or "WASPy" or "privileged" with "precious" or "precocious" itd be a little more... accurate.

benneton/"sell your paintings at the united nations"/louis vuitton/"hyannisport is a ghetto"/"you spilt keffir on your keffiyeh"

― plaxico (I know, right?), Monday, January 18, 2010 8:33 PM (54 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

those are all from the last album!

and if were being pedantic only benneton and hyannisport are WASP signifiers. and only those two + louis vuitton are privilege signifiers.

― max, Tuesday, January 19, 2010 1:36 AM (1 minute ago)

jeez i am sorry not every second word is bryn mawr or DAR

ha well! if were going to talk about my people lets at least get the signifiers right

also i havent really gotten to the point on the new album where i know lyrics