Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

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!

for the better, imo

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

I do! But then I've been a huge Monochrome Set fan for 20+ years. they had panache and wit and could play like crazy though. and they had the ability to write amazing lyrics and songs. (and the way they incorporated non-western elements into their britpop was seamless and no big deal.)

Interviewer: "Is it true that you are descended from Indian princes?"

Bid: "Kings, actually."

i'm paraphrasing that last bit. from a snippet on an album i haven't heard in a long time.

i'm curious about vampire weekend though. if they did make snobby boating and yachting pop i would probably love them.

it can probably work on that level tho, if you want it to

i'll check them out. indie pop with ANY kind of attitude or point of view or novel approach will always get checked out by me. there isn't much out there that fits that bill.

for the better, imo

totally, it's a nice reversal.

tim's interpretation of VW's lyrics is tremendously alluring right up until i went to read the "contra" lyrics and it's just like...where is the narrative, the depth that would allow for comparisons to hollinghurst and tartt (both of whom i love)? the characterisation is total cardboard, there's not much insight or wit into either the narrator or the girl's personality, there's just nothing to latch on to, there's no progression from one point to the next...c'mon, when i think of pop lyrics that are genuinely astute and insightful into matters of class i think of, idk, pulp's "common people" (which i don't even like that much) or nellie mckay's "respectable". songs with complexity and humour which actually tell a tale.

Yeah in fairness there's a lot of "meeting halfway" going on here! But of course if you like the music that's what you do; if you don't like it then the song becomes entirely dismissible.

It's the same way in which we see value in Taylor's reversal of Shakespeare whereas others find it deplorable. The willingness to believe in both the intentions and execution of storytellers in music depends 90% on our sense of goodwill generated by enjoyment of the music itself, I tend to think.

i think i was just expecting more...content! i don't actually like the lyrics to "common people" very much, but there's so obviously a ton going on there - i don't think it achieves what it wants to b/c of the mean-spiritedness on the part of the narrator, but it's still a fully-formed character study and narrative. mckay's "respectable" uses class signifiers to portray a character more complex than you think really skilfully, and develops it in a really captivating way. "contra" is literally just "i think this, i think you think that, fin."

i guess it's a step fwd from the lyrics on the debut album which i found HILARIOUSLY bad

xp to Tim

Except that our willingness to have goodwill toward the music affects how whether we enjoy the music. If you are not open to enjoying a song, you won't enjoy it (there can be exceptions but I think this is generally true).

Which is why I tend to ignore negative criticism of music: I am looking reasons to open up to things. My goodwill is what's scarce.

Oh absolutely, yes. I just meant that are perception of what lyrics are doing (and whether they're successful in doing it) is even more enjoyment dependent than anything else. It does happen that people get into music they otherwise wouldn't like because of the lyrics but I think it's the exception to the rule.

I actually tend to like lyrics in general, assuming I get into the music: there's no examples I can think of off the top of my head where lyrics really put me off in and of themselves. I accept that this doesn't appear to be typical.

Ok I see what you mean: you mean goodwill to lyrics specifically. I don't attend much to the content of pop lyrics (compared to the wordplay of lyrics, say) so it would be unusual for me to be put off by a lyric, but if I get into a song and relisten a bunch of times then my goodwill to the lyric can evaporate: this happened to me with Wilco about a decade ago.

i'm rarely put off by vague or generic lyrics, but overreaching try-hard lyrics really grate on me (thinking los campesinos and assorted twee scandopop here) - to really love a song i increasingly need a real connection to the lyrics though. obviously delivery can elevate (or indeed drag down) a lyric.

lex, VW's lyrics are so much more oblique than Cocker's or McKay's that it's not a useful comparison. If you're open to it, it's not hard to miss the sense of outsiderdom and distaste for the super-rich in White Sky, the growing-older melancholy in Giving Up the Gun, the loss and confusion in Diplomat's Son, the self-aware class anxiety of Taxi Cab. It's not just arch, meaningless signifiers. In Common People, Jarvis has nothing but contempt for the slumming rich girl, but Koenig is constantly wrestling with his mixed feelings for super-confident trust-fund girls (and, in Diplomat's Son, boys) - he's suspicious but he's intoxicated. My wife often talks about people who go through life without touching the sides - they're annoying because of their unearned self-assurance, but their poise is enviable too: "I don't think your eyes/have ever looked surprised"; "You said baby, we don't speak of that/Like a real aristocrat." Like the narrators Tim mentions, and going back to Nick in the Great Gatsby, Koening feels ugly and awkward and unsophisticated in the presence of the genuinely affluent, and because he can't be like them he takes potshots at them but often feels churlish for doing so. The fact he (ie the narrator rather than Koenig himself) uses so many arcane words rather than more obvious and well-known signifiers, frames him as an outsider trying to master the vocab of privilege but overdoing it. So Hopper's binary choice - either Koenig loves the lifestyle or he's spoofing it - ignores the nervous ambivalence which is the whole point.

<3 the great gatsby - it's curious that people are comparing VW to some of my favourite authors, though crucially despite their lead protagonists, fitzgerald/tartt/hollinghurst all write in an incredibly self-assured manner - not the self-assurance of the super-privileged who "don't have to touch the sides", but the self-assurance of writers with an incredible command over their craft who can portray (and skewer) both those who live lives of privilege and the outsiders trying to pass in that life. i do wish i found VW's lyrics half as interesting as they could be, w/those themes; as it is, beyond the grating overreach it just comes off as those same ol' social awkwardness that makes up indie musicians' bread and butter transposed to rich society. idk i just like to hear self-assurance!

(nick is probably the least interesting great gatsby character for me - my favourite is jordan baker though <3 )

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

― Blue Fucks Like Ben Nelson (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, January 31, 2010 10:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"Really doe?"

http://www.gothtronic.com/Goth/img_/Music1/plaatje/necro.jpg

Vampire Weekend: The William Makepeace Thackeray of 2010?

Maybe Tom Townsend in Whit Stillman's Metropolitan is a closer analogue to VW than Gatsby etc.

i like them now! i'm gonna buy the album. do they have cool 12 inches with cool b-sides? they remind me of lots of 80's stuff i liked way back when. like i said on the grammys thread, all this race/class stuff is silly. if they were british nobody would even care. it would just be part of the act. like the song i heard from the new album. they've got pep. i like pep. and their songs are pretty short. another plus.

they could stand to be even shorter.

koenigs themes are more like roths or woody allens. not that hes nearly as good a writer as either of those two, but great gatsby is only a useful comparison point in terms of its alternating fascination and disgust with wealth and society.

This thread lost me several years ago (like Scott says, "the race and class stuff on the vampire thread is funny. if they were british nobody would even blink. they would just be british!"), but did anybody link to the reviews below yet? Am I the first person to point out that the beginning of "Cousins" sounds kind of like the Contortions, or not?

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=1870

Only an American could say that the class stuff wouldn't be an issue in Britain. If they were British and singing about Oxbridge and country houses in the same way, they'd have been torn to shreds the minute they appeared.