Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

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!"

Well fair enough - I only half-listen to loads of songs myself - but if you read the lyrics they make perfect sense.

Especially "rows and rows of disused milk floats"?

We mostly work to live
Until we live to work

then we plan our work and work out plan

and are workin' hard but hardly workin'

it's hard to fly with the eagles when you work with the turkeys!

it you don't have to be crazy to work here but it helps! :)

Milk floats are little battery-powered vehicles that deliver the milk every morning (or rather did - there aren't many left now)

i'm all for WASP rock. i wish there was an entire Gossip Girls genre. That didn't actually include most of the music they play on Gossip Girls. I guess Gilmore Girls came close, but I have no time for Grant Lee Buffalo.

sparklehorse now there was a band

Milk floats are little battery-powered vehicles that deliver the milk every morning (or rather did - there aren't many left now)

For a second I thought you meant these were robots that did this and I'm all "Damn, what a country."

Personally, I always thought W.A.S.P. could have afforded to be a lot WASPier, myself.

I like the SFJ article about Pavement's use of class-coded language. "Jitney" is a VW word if ever there was one.

i'm waiting for my very own sufjan type singer who bases each of his albums on a different Louis Auchincloss novel.

meanwhile i didn't even know that Louis had died! R.I.P. Louis. I love you big time. (just coming in on the newswire.)

i should start an ILB thread for him.

i'm waiting for my very own sufjan type singer who bases each of his albums on a different Louis Auchincloss novel.

Alfred, your time is now.

personally would love to hear VW cover Fuck Like a Beast

x-post