Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

Always thought "Keep The Car Running" sounded more like "On The Dark Side" than anything else.

"on the darkside" is kind of a jam, it must be said

if they're appropriating "world music", it's pretty much fair enough for world music specialists to judge them on those terms

but not very useful unless you are also a world music specialist who shares this guy's particular and clear hangups (sharing sensibilities from world music apparently means having to sound just like what you are copying, which aside from being more problematic from a psuedo-imperialist POV also means not being able to insert any of yourself into your own music; having to give a shit whether someone 25 years ago walked any of the same ground you are working with now and getting grouchy about that)

was listening to this album today on my lunch break, I'm obsessing on the bit where he goes
"You and this model sit outside the side-
In a house on a street they wouldn’t park on the night.

Dad was a risk taker.
His was a shoe maker.
You greatest hits 2006,
Little listmaker."

and then you know the chorus is

"Me and my cousins,
and
You and your cousins
It’s a line that is always running.
Me and my cousins,
You and your cousins,
I can feel it coming"

and its really great the way its a song abt i think remembering spending the summer @ ur cousins house when you were younger, but like obv they had more money than u and you kinda realise that you're different from them now bc of that and its got something to do with some family history to do with your dad that nobody ever talks abt now and its even got a bit of that self-made man romance ("his was a shoemaker") and i think its really rich as a little vignette even if its not as straighforwardly "narrative" as yeah jarvis cocker or something,

i really like singing that horchata/balaklava line. glad this hashing out of the lyrical content is taking place. it's helping me dig this a little more.

arcade fire sounds like a poor mans indie springsteen which is fine with me

a rich kid's indie springsteen, i think you mean!!!!

springsteen is supposed to be the poor man's sprinsteen, aminotcorrect

nabisco might become vampire weekend's jon landau

HIPSTER ALERT!!!!!

http://www.backstagegallery.com/photos/BH/3010/Bruce-Springsteen-The-E-Street-Band-pictures-1975-BH-3010-004-l.jpg

well whatever arcade fire are, they sound enough like springsteen that i enjoy their music

also they do put on a pretty rad show i must say

well whatever arcade fire are, they sound enough like springsteen that i enjoy their music

haha this is exactly the reason I like the arcade fire

even i don't really hate the arcade fire (but i do hate the little springsteen i've heard)

not self-assured enough?

"Horchata" has no flow for me. It stops too often to let the mediocre vocals in. I don't care what they're singing about. If I want provocative ideas, I'll just pull out the old library card.

okay "hate" is strong re: Arcade Fire, I just am not into them

when i want provocative ideas i fire up the browser and head to ilm

THIS BAND ISNT AS GOOD AS ZZ TOP!

^truth brick thrown thru the window of max's worldview

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

i hate arcade fire guys

Bands who I still don't understand why people think they sound like Springsteen: Arcade Fire, Hold Steady, Gaslight Anthem (at least one of which I like, even more than John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band.)

sharing sensibilities from world music apparently means having to sound just like what you are copying

But he likes "Cousins"! Weirder thing is how he hopes "the 40-year tyranny of plodding kit-drum beats and testosterone-fuelled power chords may soon burn itself out," but he still wants "more red meat next time"! Sounds kind of conflicted.

but i also kinda hate springsteen

this may have already been linked somewhere on this thread, but a friends notes this sfj pavement essay from sometime last century as sort of germane here.

but even there, this whole idea that "these aren't things rock n roll usually talks about," i mean, maybe not "usually" but it's a long way from being new. several rolling stones songs come to mind -- "play with fire," "19th nervous breakdown," "dead flowers," it's not like the mores of the ruling class are a new pop topic.

Not to mention Steely Dan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=157nAcA6Woc

^^^
xhuxk if you don't understand why people think this sounds like springsteen, I dunno what to tell you.

oh i really love this springsteen cover (tho)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k83xsEAFig

arcade fire is springsteen shivering on some amphetamine withdrawal.

this remix of the orig is awes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suM2xgsZQKQ

"sorry i dont really see why "if vampire weekend were british" is relevant"

i meant that people HERE - in the u.s. - wouldn't even blink if they were british. it would just be british people going on about tories and council flats and the queen mum like they always do. so it just seems funny that american critics would get all heated about an american band singing the same sort of stuff as blur or whoever. we aren't used to people getting all specific and using fancy words here, i guess. thus a generation of pavement scholars and gbv-ology courses in american colleges.

"these guys are kind of great and that is something I was really not expecting given the way ppl react to them (was totally expecting to hate them like Arcade Fire and Arctic Monkeys)"

yeah, same here!

"if they're appropriating "world music", it's pretty much fair enough for world music specialists to judge them on those terms"

who can ever forget the great Toto Coelo debate of 1982.

when i want provocative ideas i fire up the browser and head to ilm

Copernicus was wrong. The Baha Men create superior music to Spoon. Our reality is but a manifold of an 11 dimension space. Your mother is above the median weight for women of her age group.

scott, the issue isn't simply 'vampire weekend is singing about stuff related to class and that bothers americans/critics' - if members of a britpop band all attended oxford and they songs about rowing championships I'm pretty sure that the issue wouldn't escape american/british criticism of the band.

'they wrote songs'

ecuador with ac wher u from btw?

xp tbh i thought that everyone in england did that, so...

if members of a britpop band all attended oxford and they songs about rowing championships I'm pretty sure that the issue wouldn't escape american/british criticism of the band.

There's no pleasing British people! First they complain about rich people like Lily Allen pretending to be poor, then this! (Most Americans I know didn't get the Lily complaints, either. At least I didn't. In fact I'm probably mis-representing them right this second.)

Anyway, Scott's point is that VW are a silly new wave band that would have been fun to find out about on MTV in 1983. And nobody complained back then that Haysi Fantayzee were not actually hobos. (Oh wait, that's different, right? Did people complain that Taco was puttin' on the ritz? I'm not sure.)

Did people complain about Haysi Fantayzee at all? They had, like, no US profile.

Same as complaining about Stephin Merritt lacking soul and then...

Hey, "Shiny Shiny" went to #74, so there! But Dexy's Midnight Runners dressed like hobos too, right? And they had a #1 hit! (Also a #86!)

Taco went #4 fwiw.

Anyway, part of the point is that, if VW were '83 Brits, they wouldn't have had a U.S. profile either. They would have been a goofy mystery.

haysi fantayzee got a HORRIBLE one star review in rolling stone at the time and i have NEVER EVER forgiven that magazine. grrrrr....

when my hero terry hall was singing "Paisley is getting his shirt off..." i had NO idea what he was going on about. i just kept dancing. still have no idea.

didn't care about paul weller's politics either. apparently they weren't great? who knows.

For some reason it just always really bothered me that the bomb was in Waldour Street instead of on Waldour Street. (What, did somebody drop it down the sewer or something?)

Maybe he just meant it was in the middle of the street? Still sounded weird, either way.

God, "A Town Called Malice" is totally incomprehensible but it totally works (as does any song that appropriates "You Can't Hurry Love").

"just got lucky" by the joboxers is a dope track

"A Town Called Malice" is totally incomprehensible but it totally works

Completely.

The Springsteen tangent makes me think of Run. It starts off with a Springsteenian we-gotta-get-outta-this-place cry:

Every dollar counts
And every morning hurts
We mostly work to live
Until we live to work

But the place they want to get out of isn't some dead-end backwater - it's fancy Manhattan bars. And then towards the end there's this fleeting admission (at least how some people hear the line - lyric sites differ) that the way out is the girl's trust fund: "with her fund it struck me the two of us could run". There's no way Koenig is saying that this is an option open to everyone, or something to be proud of, so it strikes me as a playful, slightly guilty tweak on the lovers-on-the-run archetype.

xpost. What's incomprehensible about A Town Called Malice? The British references? It strikes me as a pretty straightforward sentiment otherwise - everyone's poor and desperate, and the town needs a kick up the arse.

Well you know me and lyrics.

"Somethingsomethingthisandthatgottaetc.whateverINATOWNCALLEDMALICEWOOOOHYEAH!"