Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

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?

np lex! i live to give

what does VW's music tell us about class and privilege beyond "we know some long words which probably most rappers know too, and have listened to paul simon"?

like playful overreaching and posturing isn't part of the indie rock ten commandments.

that doesn't mean that you can't make any judgments about how well you do those things.

for one, they bring up interesting things about class & privilege simply by existing

yeah but so does my mom. so what?

Lex, read my comments about upper-middle-class Jewish families and their relationships to WASP'y Ivy league institutions.

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

as mr que has already pointed out, i don't think hopper was actually doing this

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.

i couldn't do this, should i be still allowed to post? i guess i'm like tipsy, i wonder what people see in this band. i listened to the new record this weekend on their website and i just don't get it--that's all.

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

i think a lot of people in this country who are jewish would identify themselves as white

also i don't think we've done nearly enough pointing-and-laughing at how insufferably whiny these people have been on twitter. nagl x 10000

i couldn't do this, should i be still allowed to post? i guess i'm like tipsy, i wonder what people see in this band. i listened to the new record this weekend on their website and i just don't get it--that's all.

nah i'm not saying you're not allowed to post -- what i'm saying is that you're not allowed to say that this discussion isn't interesting to you or that the band doesn't represent or bring up anything interesting

not that you have, i'm using "you" to mean "people who don't like the band"

also i don't think we've done nearly enough pointing-and-laughing at how insufferably whiny these people have been on twitter. nagl x 10000

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Sunday, January 31, 2010 3:55 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i don't understand this sentiment -- are they not allowed to defend themselves?

shh! Only Paris Hilton can defend herself.

she has a lot to account for, tbh

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KGRM4WkDKnc/SGGr6jB5HXI/AAAAAAAAAnQ/q7mI1MTY0mo/s400/neutral%2Bmilk%2Bhotel%282%29.jpg

wasp culture as something that is identifiably anglo-saxon & protestant kinda died out a while ago, which is why people use it in a sort of generalized, imprecise way now. lazy, for sure, but also not something to get super-butthurt about in 2010 imo

i couldn't do this, should i be still allowed to post? i guess i'm like tipsy, i wonder what people see in this band. i listened to the new record this weekend on their website and i just don't get it--that's all.

This is kinda obvious, but if you don't enjoy the album, you don't understand the band, and even the paratextual discussions revolving the band bore you and find tedious -- I'd really suggest maybe moving on? Like, I'm all about discussing music you dislike -- I find a lot of my thoughts are super clarified more with music I dislike than music I like. But if you really can't get anything out of the music, the articles about the music, or the ILX discussion about that music and those articles -- why bother?

haha. finally, a pop star that can coax jeff magnum out of hiding

xp

can someone ban lex from this thread? kthxbye

I agree with you, Tipsy. I'm not yet congratulating the band for anything. I'm just saying: a good bit of Hopper's review wants to be about this notion of privileged first-worlders appropriating third-world signifiers. And interestingly enough, the thing she's reviewing contains this lyric that's actually about ... privileged first-worlders appropriating third-world signifiers. So isn't a little superficial -- or at least a missed opportunity -- to go "oh, there's the name of a typeface in there, which is a pretty bourgeois thing to include?" Which is different from saying that the contents of the lyrics is banal, or unclear, or "wrong." (As Que mentioned, the review does allude to the idea that they're unclear, but it doesn't seem much interested in clarifying them in the first place.)

Like I said, this is apart from whether any of this is good; maybe at some point I'll say something separate about what they're doing musically, or what they're doing lyrically.

(To Lex: I would hope it's clear that I've only said I think this is a general bad habit in critical discourse. I haven't tried to suggest that it applies to all critics or that I know anyone's motives. I'm sorry if you continue to find my commentary, like a lot of other things, offensive.)

holy shit we're about to duplicate that paris thread

Summary of that thread plz

that doesn't mean that you can't make any judgments about how well you do those things.

Sure, but so much of the argument seems to be (and this is hyperbole obv) "who are they to touch African music, these white indie goofs? -- surely Ezra Koenig is the Rudyard Kipling of Pop" and that's just stupid since in no other case do people get upset when indie rockers co-opt another culture's music and make it their own (for better or worse, though usually the latter).

wasp culture as something that is identifiably anglo-saxon & protestant kinda died out a while ago, which is why people use it in a sort of generalized, imprecise way now. lazy, for sure, but also not something to get super-butthurt about in 2010 imo

Well of course. Another interesting thing about discussions like this is how much we use terms and ideas that are from the baby boomer generation or before that no longer really apply today. Discussions about a "counter-culture" and "hipsters" are so pointless precisely for the same reason using words like WASP are -- because we're talking about ideas and a world that doesn't really exist any more.

can't keep up witht he xposrs

but if you don't enjoy the album, you don't understand the band, and even the paratextual discussions revolving the band bore you and find tedious and even the paratextual discussions revolving the band bore you and find tedious

i find a lot this discussion pretty interesting. i keep hearing about their catchy songs and i keep waiting to hear one.

I find a lot of my thoughts are super clarified more with music I dislike than music I like.

yeah i mean this is a really good point. listening to the band made me think a lot about the things and qualities that i like in music. a really good drummer, for one thing. but point taken.

i don't even understand a littel how cries of 'theft' and 'appropriation' get bandied about in 2010 after decades of continents influencing each other

White boys don't steal -- they get mugged.

Oh and also:

- yes, I'm well aware of the risk of sounding condescending

- I want to be super-clear that I am not against class critiques, identity politics, conversations about "appropriation," whatever (I like those conversations!) -- I just happen to be of the opinion that these things are often brought to bear in a way that's really obfuscating, that obliterates the thing being discussed more than it sheds light on it, and that can ultimately look, to me personally, like posturing or one-upping. And at some point, they turn out to be against the qualities you'd want identity politics to bring out of people -- like curiosity, egalitarianism, interest in people's particulars, etc.

- honestly, to those who are like "but how does this make the band interesting" -- it doesn't. I would love to be reading and talking more about how their music works (which I still think is kinda weird and rare) or what's going on lyrically. (Maybe at some point when people are less tired of thinking about this band, I'll try to say something myself.)

(And BTW! Hilariously enough -- either I had a bad hallucination or last night's SNL included a bit with an Iranian-American woman playing Sonia Sotomayor talking about how the supreme court is really white.)

Every time Rostam's Twitter is linked I keep thinking it's Matos's for a second or two.

same here.

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

as mr que has already pointed out, i don't think hopper was actually doing this

Mr que quotes Hooper saying "maybe they're being satirical and maybe they're not, hmmm can I find a way to dismiss them either way?"

I really dislike this kind of crit - "I don't really know whether my argument is remotely convincing so let me hedge my bets by setting up a qualifier which establishes that if I'm wrong, I'm still right - 'cos the important thing is that Vampire Weekend are hateful, whatever the reason, agreed guys?"

Totally puts the cart before the horse - turning yr love or yr hate into the sole determining factor of whatever arguments you put forward - which is bad enough on its own but adding sociological stuff in the mix makes it a lot worse.

The specific argument is wrong in two ways anyway. Good satire is premised on being so close-to-as-to-be-indistinguishable-from the object of satire as possible. The idea is that the presentation of the thing-itself doesn't need massive air quotes placed around it. This is why Tina Fey's second Sarah Palin send-up was funnier than her first: she simply repeated exactly the same things that Palin had said, which was much funnier than making up caricaturised dialogue.

But this is not what VW are doing because they're not trying to be satirical. To the extent that their lyrics are "about" class they are about the precarious position of a person who feels they are an insider-outsider, the person who wants both to be able to observe and to judge the culture they are part of but also be recognised and validated by it, and knows this and recognises the contradiction but persists anyway (I dunno, maybe this seems like a stretch to you guys, but my entire life is basically about recognising the contradictions in my behaviour and persisting anyway, so it seems straightforward enough to me...). I've started thinking of the singer-narrator as being like the main character in The Secret History, or the main character in The Line of Beauty.

In fact it's funny how many of the lyrics seem to become even sharper for me once I frame them in this way. I already explained what I thought "I Think Ur A Contra" is about upthread, but running it through a Tartt/Hollinghurst-filter made me think that "contra" has an even more specific meaning than I had originally given it - a "contra" in this setting is not merely someone who rebels for the sake of rebellion, but also someone who rebels because their membership in the ruling class is lifetime-guaranteed - they can become socialist radicals for a month and then return to the fold and be forgiven their sins by virtue of who they are - like the daughter of the Tory MP in The Line of Beauty. The singer sees this for what it is - the safeness of the rebellion, by virtue of its ever-present safety net, undercutting the meaning of the rebellion entirely - but also envies it, wants to strip away the illusion of danger but also recognises that this illusion is what attracted him in the first place.

the Holinghurst analogy is apt. Contra's narrator sounds younger to me, though, which puts the occasionally muddled lyrics in perspective; it's like he's just figuring out his relation to other people.

honestly, to those who are like "but how does this make the band interesting" -- it doesn't.

Ezra can i get your bandmate rostam Email

n1tsuh is it true ur joining VW in 2010

To the extent that their lyrics are "about" class they are about the precarious position of a person who feels they are an insider-outsider, the person who wants both to be able to observe and to judge the culture they are part of but also be recognised and validated by it...

yeah I agree with this. it's the person on the inside who feels alienated because they'll never completely fit in, the person just barely on the outside looking in.

I think as well that one of the ways in which tribalism works is that the outsider-insider feels the need to immerse themselves in the trappings of the tribe in order to reassure themselves and others that their permit should be renewed, to embrace those trappings more enthusiastically than the actual tribe while at the same time feeling self-conscious and/or uncomfortable about it.

Ha ha the other model for a "contra" is the sister in Arrested Development.

now that most ppl have nabisco-otm'd can we agree that this site was full of noxious unfunny Game-playing stuff white people like

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.

tim f posted on this quote already but--1) did koenig ever actually say they were pure satire? not that i dont think he did but im not willing to take hoppers word for it at this point

and 2) since when do you need to be able to tell the difference between "lampooning of ___" and "genuine fascination with ___" for satire to be sharp--in fact, since when have those two things, in satire, ever been mutually exclusive??

I'm just saying: a good bit of Hopper's review wants to be about this notion of privileged first-worlders appropriating third-world signifiers. And interestingly enough, the thing she's reviewing contains this lyric that's actually about ... privileged first-worlders appropriating third-world signifiers.

yeah, no, i agree. i said somewhere upthread that the only part of hopper's article that i really found convincing was when she talked about the music itself, how it sounds and how well or poorly they execute what they're attempting. i'm sort of pro-appropriation and hybridization as a rule and i think taking vw to task for their whiteness (perceived or real) and/or "colonialism" or whatever is a silly rabbithole to go down. and it's definitely true that vw is self-aware about all of this stuff. (possibly too self-aware, but that's another issue.)

yah i think im more interested in ppl who are kindof in love with something lampooning it bc otherwise it just seems snarky