Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/blackboard/images/eno-l.jpg

arzE very serious question 4 amateur ethnographers: is DJ Pauly D white?
7 minutes ago from Tweetie

none of this is addressing the problem of their drummer.

they should hire a better drummer. the beatles did it.

(honestly i just went back to the first album for the first time in a while and at first i was like "you know this is kind of catchy, the guy's voice isn't that bad, i'm probably being too harsh," and then after about two and a half songs it was just ARGH can't anybody establish a groove anymore what the hell is the matter with you people...)

and i understand that in some ways they're no more ramshackle rhythmically than a lot of postpunk bands, but a band like (say) the slits capitalized on the stiltedness of their rhythms, they did something with their awkwardness, because they understood that it was awkward and that it was a tool to work with. they turned it into something hard and interesting. vw doesn't have that inclination, which leaves them in a kind of mushy limbo.

maybe they're just judeo-persian rhythms, whitey

Arctic Monkeys kick Vampire Weekend's ass around the block over and over again.

xpost:
yr right i think what i really want is for them to play polkas -- the music of my forefathers.

jesshopp

@matsoR Do you really desire to try to bash this out on Twitter? Or do you actually want to have a real discussion about it?

Oh yeah! I would love to see Rostam and Jessica go cage match over this thing.

Having heard Vampire Weekend for the first time in my life this morning, I think that knocking them is kind of like knocking college kids for wearing madras shorts.

Well then:

http://twitter.com/arzE/status/8432237206

don't think nabisco gets why people read music crit.

Btw, I think goole is OTM about them being upper-middle-class looking at old wealth, and I think that's why Ezra being Jewish (and I guess the other guy being Persian) is important. There's a whole history of Jewish wealth contending with old WASP money, and I believe that's definitely running through what's going on here, even if it's not explicit. They're also one of the first generations of wealthy Jews (or their parents are, most likely) who don't seriously have to deal with things like restricted country clubs, quotas at Ivy's, etc.

I didn't know he was Jewish but that fits their in-the-world-but-not-of-it attitude towards WASP culture that I mentioned earlier.

Jewish people who have to immerse themselves in certain WASP schools and places usually have to engage in such complicated role-play that they end up knowing all the social codes and shibboleths better than the kids who were raised in that environment. The other kids in the rich clubhouse have close to no self-awareness about the life they lead and don't have to spend as much time trying to fit in.

I get that there are a whole lot of records in the world, and sometimes it's necessary to just say "pfft whatever" to one of them. But look. A band always gets described as WASPy. One of them says, "actually, I'm Jewish, and this guy's Persian." Are you really gonna react by just saying "LOL same difference?" That's high-level print criticism? As opposed to spending like a couple minutes' critical thinking on the kind of stuff people are saying here -- that maybe there's this long history of successful east-coast Jews with a complicated love/hate deal with old-money WASP culture? (That maybe a middle-class Persian guy has a related experience?) That maybe what you've just been told might be relevant in terms of figuring out what, if anything, they're actually saying in their songs? And if you really, really don't give a shit, and for some reason you're still agreeing to review their record, then why even bring it up?

Same deal with the crack about how one song mentions a typeface ("not typical rude-boy fodder" or whatever) -- like, no inclination to think about the actual meaning of the lines with the typeface in them? Cause so far as I can tell, they're actually about Americans wearing shirts with day-glo guns on them, like making an aesthetic out of the rest of the world's political violence. (Which we all thought was kinda cool when a Sri Lankan did it.) It's not like I don't understand the value of occasionally just going "LOL typeface," but seriously, do people read criticism not to hear some kind of actual ideas about stuff? I'm sure if you asked the Reader's music editor, he would not tell you his editorial mission is "a lazy zing is always better than an actual thought about your subject matter."

re: Ned's post

http://twitter.com/arzE/status/8432255955
http://twitter.com/arzE/status/8432293791

Also:

http://twitter.com/matsoR/status/8432317629
http://twitter.com/matsoR/status/8432532487

It's kinda ironic since one of my favorite Hopper pieces is her Emo Where The Girls Aren't piece which I thought was compelling and elegant even when I disagreed with certain points she made in it. Like she made special care to show where her thesis fell down, where girls sometimes *were* (as it were), why she still loved the music even when it fell down on this account etc -- lots of room for subtlety. And here it's just blunt, obvious and totally lacking in nuance or discussion.

Are you really gonna react by just saying "LOL same difference?"

huh, i'm re reading Hopper's article, kind of wondering where you're getting this reduction from. she even admits that they're a difficult band to parse:

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.

The music on Contra is easier to untangle than the lyrics.

She's trying to figure out whether they're a bunch of white kids trying to satirize this kind of bourgie lifestyle or whether they're white kids participating in this bourgie lifestyle. What nabisco is pointing out, I think, is that clearly they're neither.

just a mostly OT note on bougie: interested in whether this is middle class or universal. open to correction but pretty sure this goes back to scorning resistance by well-off blacks to the kind of politics represented by Angela Davis, and though of course there was a lot of college activism i don't think it was ever confined to the black middle classes, much less today. yeah it codes to "acting a snob" today and predictably is often applied when a chick shoots you down, cf. Yo-Yo's mocking indignation when she gets a holla in quick & kurupt's Whatcha Wan Do "and after a couple sips of the cup you want coochie??? now that's when i start acting quote unquote bougie!". But see also the interesting experiences of being ubjected to it recounted in this piece on racialious, Bougie By Design I don't think there's really awareness of how much socialist-influenced stuff generally remains in mainstream black america, no one really talks about it but you watch something like Dave Chappelle's Block Party and half the country seems on the brink of revolution like "we be readin' marx where i'm from"

think VW could counter a lot of their critics by reaching out to dude

QUOTE UNQUOTE bougie! fucking hell i have spent most of this year trying to decipher those three syllables THANKYOU ZVOOKSTER this thread has been beneficial for something after all

listening back it sounds really fucking obvious as well

Been a rough couple of days. Felt like some of the stuff written wasn't just hurtful to me personally, but hurtful to the world at large

rip world

That's true, Que -- I guess I've written enough about this that I'm being a little reductive now. Over all, though, I do feel like the piece rejects openings to think about the answers to those questions, as if it wants to do the class critique without doing much work examining the thing it's critiquing. The typeface thing seems like a really good example of that. (And this is sort of apart from the main thing that bugged me, which was evaluating people's backgrounds as part of some defensive game, etc.)

this whole dumb game theory is as reductive of critics' motivations as dismissing VW's ethnicity is of their background imo

Cause so far as I can tell, they're actually about Americans wearing shirts with day-glo guns on them, like making an aesthetic out of the rest of the world's political violence.

ok fair enough but is that really an interesting thing to say? i just feel like these guys get credit for some really obvious shit, both musically and lyrically, that makes me think somehow everybody standard's have slipped. nothing in either their musical or lyrical references feels fresh to me, it all feels like sort of halfhearted glosses on things that lots of postpunk types did better a long time ago. (and that m.i.a., for that matter since you mention her, is doing a lot better now.) sure, it's not fair to knock them for being "white," or affluent, or for their musical appropriations or knowing words like mansard and futura. but do we have to be impressed that they've heard highlife records and know words like mansard and futura? don't we all know lots of people who know those things?

somehow i feel like this band is being graded on a curve.

everybody's standards, i mean. pardon my apostrophe.

c'mon, tipsy: if you've read a thoughtful review of a band you hate (as I have, several tims, re Animal Collective), why assume h/she's "grading on a curve"?

i hate the way attention's being deflected on to the class angle being possibly clumsily expressed by some critics (which is forgivable, it's a minefield) - that's pretty much because there's no actual angle to latch on to in VW's music or lyrics, just a bunch of words which don't mean anything either way - they don't say ANYTHING interesting about class or even start tackling it (on their first album at least) - but you've got all these class signifiers free-floating around, but yeah trying to attack them on those grounds is a non-starter cuz they may as well be gibberish for all the use they're put to.

honestly nabisco do you have any idea how snotty and condescending you sound when you tell all other critics everywhere to stop playing these classroom privilege games, as if you've worked out what our real agenda is

Sounds like you're the one taking things personally.

what the hell are you so defensive about?

Lex, if not about what nabisco writes, how else do you explain:

He bandies about the ethnic heritage of Vampire Weekend's members (he's Jewish, Rostam Batmanglij is Iranian), but 'One of my bandmates is Iranian-American' has got to be the Pitchfork-nation equivalent of 'Some of my best friends are black.'

The funniest and lamest reoccurring insult towards VW is that they're rather amateurish and somewhat awkward about incorporating non-indie influences (Afropop et al) into their sound -- like playful overreaching and posturing isn't part of the indie rock ten commandments.

i just reject the implication that this stupid game is something we all play

xps defensive is a natural reaction to sth offensive

c'mon, tipsy: if you've read a thoughtful review of a band you hate (as I have, several tims, re Animal Collective), why assume h/she's "grading on a curve"?

it's just with vw i keep seeing them credited with things musically or lyrically as if it's somehow unusual for a rock band to reference various kinds of non-american music and rhythm or to have lyrics critiquing class signifiers and the privileges of wealth and etc. and those things don't seem unusual at all to me as components or subjects of rock music, indie or otherwise. unless like someone's never heard fear of music or entertainment! or whatever. which makes me think that what's supposed to be "unusual" about it really is that it's affluent-white-kids-from-columbia, because apart from that angle (however suspect it may be) i just don't get the novelty.

i'm not saying that people who like it don't honestly like it. i think they do. i just find the rhetorical support for it unpersuasive.

for one, they bring up interesting things about class & privilege simply by existing, as we have plenty of people in this thread who are talking about this band even though they couldn't recite maybe more than two lyrics by them.

lex, your incomprehension strikes me as infinitely more condescending. If you really can't conceive why somebody with a brain and ears would like VW without (a) implying that they're cynics (b) accusing them of ignoring some lex-approved standard of pop, then, yeah, your orneriness makes sense.

I don't think nabisco was saying everyone is always playing it, and if he was, yeah -- probably overreaching. But I think his explanation works on Hopper's article. (I don't even know if she's always playing it, just that it's clearly what she's doing here.)

this entire discussion feels like a more boring version of the paris hilton wars, except paris's music was actually great

The only thing I have to add is that if nabisco's essay isn't included in the 2011 edition of Best Music Writing, I will weep.

Because it's that good. Better, even.

hich makes me think that what's supposed to be "unusual" about it really is that it's affluent-white-kids-from-columbia

i don't know if you've heard but one of them is jewish and one of them is iranian just fyi

this entire discussion feels like a more boring version of the paris hilton wars, except paris's music was actually great

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Sunday, January 31, 2010 3:48 PM (22 seconds ago) Bookmark

you're really gonna conflate "attending a good college" and "being an heir to one of the most valuable fortunes in america" huh? that's smart

and anyway, what did paris' music say about class & privilege beyond "my dad has money so he can buy me pop songs," which is something we knew already

holy shit we're about to duplicate that paris thread

SORRY EVERYONE, SUGGEST BAN ME

this whole dumb game theory is as reductive of critics' motivations as dismissing VW's ethnicity is of their background imo

So you're saying Jessica Hooper's article is dumb and reductive, lex??

People keep saying that this discussion is really boring, but I don't see other incredibly fascinating conversations on ILM at the moment that are clearly better. I guess I've been digging the food/drug metaphor discussion in the poll results thread, but other than that -- Lex, is there some brilliant discussion elsewhere that explains why you're so dismissive of this one?