Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/images/set3/juno1_wideweb__470x321,2.jpg

On first listen I like "Contra" far less than the first album.

I have picked my battles, though possibly not wisely

i dont think most of the 'debate' around vampire weekend is very interesting at all tbh -- i think a lot of it is HOT BUTTON SIGNIFYING without any actual things being said about these issues, much like their music itself -- which is fine for music, but boring for discourse tbh

-Deej

So what's better for discourse?

more discussion of bay area rap, imo

I wouldn't be surprised to hear Gucci rhyme "Horchata" with "balaclava".

haha true

yeah i got amigos but they dont drink horchata / just bring me kilos while rocking balaclavas

I listened to the album for the first time last night. I actually liked the music. As for the lyrics, I need to give a another spin. (First spin is always about the music for me; Second is more about the lyrics). I think they are an ok little band. I honestly don't know what is the hype/debate about them (or any indie band tbh). Like Spoon I just think they are pleasant.

I mean the new one "Contra."

whatever else they ape. Spoon is totally where they are getting the indie rock side of their influences from imo

. ,

vampire weekend >> spoon imo

ehhhhhhhhh. I like both, but I dunno about that.

Vampire Weekend could cover "Trouble Comes Running" expertly.

let's wait and see how vampire weekend is doing in 16 years

thats 832 weekends

how many of them will actually be "vampire" weekends

all

of

them

http://images.channeladvisor.com/Sell/SSProfiles/73000107/Images/19/Twilight-New-Moon-Jacob-Poster-545.jpg

that dude's a werewolf yo

Wearwolf Weekend sounds like a band that would have been big in 2006/2007.

Werewolf Weekend I mean.

Wearwolf Weekend = electroclash act.

we're wolves on weekends

I've been told the band is now magically all over KROQ and the adult-alternative stations in L.A.

jessica hopper wrote a lengthy diss in the reader this week, not online yet.

I like that listening to vampire weekend now constitutes a 'guilty pleasure' for me

jessica hopper wrote a lengthy diss in the reader this week, not online yet.

― not a playa but i ilx a lot (deej), Thursday, January 28, 2010 5:05 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

yippee, better put that in google alerts.

It can't be as good as Julianne Shepherd's 2008 diss.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/vampire-weekend-contra-review-indie-rock-appropriation-ezra-koenig/Content?oid=1358299

:D :D :D

i love this

If this all makes Contra seem like a fuckless episode of Gossip Girl written by Jimmy Buffett, then I've made my point.

point has been made a million times before but vw arent really aping african sounds, theyre aping paul simon and peter gabriels aping of african sounds

It is a perfect slam.

Indie rockers are supposed to be grubby proles

not really

i like that her angle is that the band's playing dumb re: class grates more than them actually being whatever class they are, and the paragraph gutting their actual music is awesomely satisfying to read

haha the gossip girl line is pretty funny

but i wouldn't worry about the state of indie rock grubbiness, the beard era of the 00s brought new heights of dudes lookin' all stinkin and bummy

(with spuds mackenzie glasses to let you know that they aren't *actual* homeless)

Still way more on board with the idea of them self-consciously playing with class signifiers in their lyrics, even if they avoid/"play dumb" about the issue in interviews. And so I don't think it has to be either pure satire or pure affection for their subjects, because it's somewhere slightly in between.

Nevertheless, Koenig insists that Vampire Weekend are not what they seem—that their lyrics are pure satire. Well, maybe the fact that so few people can tell the difference between their supposed lampooning of affluence and genuine fascination with it is a sign that they need to sharpen their game.

so few? isn't everyone everywhere congratulating themselves for getting the joke? besides, the combination of lampooning and fascination is...the point. i mean, this is an easy call, everybody reads fitzgerald in high school. this para is basically 'hi i'm jessica hopper and i have been trolled'

i mean, this is an easy call, everybody reads fitzgerald in high school.

Only read Gatsby last year, FWIW. Wasn't quite as stellar as I'd been led to believe.

even if they avoid/"play dumb" about the issue in interviews.

of course they MUST be "playing" dumb, these are boys of fine upper class stock

tomorrow ned will run faster

that's not really that good of a slam

Vampire Weekend are about as African as Animal Collective is rave—parts are there, but not the whole.

lol why is this a problem/issue/criticism?

Man, that's just a rehash of years-old arguments that barely apply to their actual music. It's a dialogue about a dialogue that kind of resonates and echo chambers around because detractors want it to. I don't hear almost any appropriation in their music save a few songs, certainly not more than many of their contemporaries. The difference, which Jessica correctly notes, is class. Nobody in the world would complain about Timbaland (who is far more wealthy than VW mind you) or some punk band on K Records appropriating third-world music. For some reason, the realities of multiculturalism and having a discussion about class isn't something you get to be part of if you're middle class and white. And especially if you're indie, I guess, for no other reason I can tell other than the author wants to paint indie in a specific light.

So at least she does some close reading, but then comes to the conclusions she wants to, e.g. "Koenig is trying to have it both ways—to be the mocking outsider while telegraphing his exact position as an upper-class white aesthete through references that connote unfettered living and heavy beach play." Uh, he's not "trying to have it both ways" he's conflicted. Like his distractors. And a lot of indie kids. And the people writing these pieces: Conflicted about class, education, wealth, appreciating other cultures and when that lapses into tourism.

If anything, VW are up front about it, writing about their real world, instead of the trad indie/"artist" romanticization of a lack of success or hiding inside of a fantasy of another world, which is a lot more condescending and insulting to my mind. I don't see how this is "escapist fantasy about wealth" at all; it seems like just the opposite-- being aware of both class and first-world wealth and possessions, conflicted about how we're defined by possessions and personal brands, acknowledging those conflicts. And it seems very Now actually.

Even if the whole "oh no appropriation" thing was somehow valid, and I never have thought it was the case, it's just something grafted onto four guys here who in the grand scheme of things are *barely* more wealthy than any of the rest of us. The issue isn't that VW have less right to give a shit about African music as we do. The average wage for someone in, say, Congo, to take an actual example from that piece, is $40 a month. Me and you and Jessica Hopper and most anyone in the U.S. or UK, even on govt dependance or govt housing, is as relatively removed from that as Ezra Koenig. But Ezra Koening wears boat shoes, so he's the faker and we're not

The difference isn't that Ezra Koenig shouldn't be "allowed" to show interest in African music (which is some closed-off, let's-ignore-the-third-world bs in the first place anyway), it's that a lot of indie kids (and Hopper, despite the noise, is rooted in these scenes too) don't want to be associated with someone preppy, or with marginally more money than they have. They want to slum it. And, again, *that's* the problem.

indie rockers are supposed to be grubby proles, not graduates of Columbia University, and front man Ezra Koenig obviously knows it.

this is just complete fucking bullshit

indie rockers are supposed to be grubby proles, not graduates of Columbia University

HI DERE

http://thosegeese.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/malko.jpg

http://www.pettediscographies.com/images/SP180slv.jpg

malk went to uva