Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

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

yeah like thats what's so great in the secret history, the way the closer he gets to whats ugly abt the old money types the more he realises that its kinda what sustains their allure

tim f posted on this quote already but--1) did koenig ever actually say they were pure satire?

Well, who cares? It's the band's fault for not articulating in its music whether it's intended as satire.

i think "satire" would be stretching it, but it's not like the archness of their tone is hard to read. who among us, indeed, gives a fuck about an oxford comma?

We Henry James fans do.

i actually can't tell you how many serial-comma debates i've been involved in, but it's a lot. (i'm always the guy banging my head on the table going "i don't care! let's just do it one way or the other, PLEASE.")

Well, who cares? It's the band's fault for not articulating in its music whether it's intended as satire.

I sort of think that if the band do believe it's "pure" satire (which is hard to say given the fact that Jessica paraphrases their intentions), by which I assume they (or jessica) would mean that they don't at all buy into what they're singing about, then they actually misunderstand their music, and undersell it.

It's the band's responsibility for wanting us to think its songs are "satire." If that's what they intend, they're wrong, or they define "satire" incorrectly, cuz that's not how I hear it.

I agree, but it'd be equally silly to say that if it's not straight satire then it's just privileged WASPS revelling in their privilege. Hooper offers a false choice.

the main character in The Line of Beauty.

OTMFM. Halfway through Line of Beauty at the moment, and the class stuff present in VW and Hollinghurst are what make them both ring true and feel relevant (to me at least - queer upper middle class North American Jew).

It's not that VW are satirizing 'WASP' culture per se, or even critiquing it. If it were, I'd probably find them to be smug and noxious. The music is often about Ezra & co. grappling with their own ambivalence with 'WASP' culture and their own place in it.

If it were, I'd probably find them to be smug and noxious.

Yeah I think that's totally right, who wants an entire album of class satire anyway??

I kinda agree with nabisco's article to a point, but how do you explain lines like "Lil Jon, he always tells the truth"?

Lil Jon is not telling the truth?

Lil Jon may or may not be telling the truth?

The truth about the windows and the walls.

Well, who cares? It's the band's fault for not articulating in its music whether it's intended as satire.

― Blue Fucks Like Ben Nelson (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, January 31, 2010 8:02 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

tim sort of covered this--to be totally honest i dont care very much what koenig and the rest of the band think about their own music or what they want it to say--my question is more, is hopper misinterpreting something that they said? or is that a direct quote?

and co-sign tim and alex in montreal on the love/hate/lampoon ambivalence being a key factor in their not being totally insufferable

i was reading that br myers essay last week and i got to the part where hes writing about murray jay siskind and he makes the same mistake w/r/t delillo that hopper does to VW; i.e., when faced w/ ambivalence, avoids the thorniness of the relationship for an easy "he loves"/"he hates"

xxp And I mean, regardless of who they are or where they come from or why i "shouldn't" sympathize with them, people trying to figure themselves out make interesting music.

ashlee simpson's compelling in the same way (in part because of, not in spite of, her status as the younger sister of a pop star, and her own ambivalence about that fact). cf. shadow, which "has no right" to be sympathetic according to detractors (rich pop star whining about her childhood) but it IS sympathetic because of how she thinks and writes about it and, in doing so, connects with me.

i could give two shits about whether people have a "right" to make the music they do - it's of far greater concern what they say and do with the music they make.

how things have changed when we seek to justify vampire weekend by means of analogy with ashlee simpson!