Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

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

i wrote an AMAZING review of the Rushmore Soundtrack for the rolling stone album guide. i wish you could all read it. i think they ended up not printing it. i go into the whole hidey-hole salinger prep school worldview. one of my better reviews.

Riding the wind, forever on a bar tab.

Alfred, your time is now.

The Decembrists got there before me.

Alfred, your time to do something ten million times better than the fucking Decembrists can ever goddamn dream of is now.

I'm skeptical of the magnitude of the "appropriation" happening here, because so far as I can tell, there are basically two very small, common things this band has picked up on in African/Caribbean music and figured out how to apply to indie pop:

1. That clean guitar tone, and the idea that you can use guitar as a melodic/harmonic instrument. Most bands like them build everything up from rhythm guitar chords; guitar is the spine of everything. VW figured out how not to do that -- their guitar is all one-note lines and double-stops, and it never takes up much space.

2. The idea that you can have a "guitar" band without rock drumming. You can use lots of different rhythms and play them sorta light and distant -- more like percussion than rock drumming.

Those seem like the two big inspirations taken, and they're both things that make them put together their songs in a way that's pretty different from the vast majority of indie bands with guitars. Both of those things are more like "useful concepts" than really trying to imitate African or Caribbean music. (On the few occasions that they really try to imitate, it can be kinda embarrassing! Like those "Blake's got a new face" backing vocals.)

DISCLAIMER: My earliest experiences of music involved my dad going back and forth between east-African folk records and A Flock of Seagulls, so I may be warped in some way that makes this stuff seem more normal than it is.

didn't see your R.I.P. thread, alfred! just started one on ilb. nobody will care there either.

the woodentops will never die. apparently.

ok who's turn is it?

I remember dude from WASP was asked if he wrote his own songs and he said, "shit no, i can barely read"

Ezra Koenig in 2013:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7UG2IghngM

i wouldn't even mind if they covered penelope tree. they should have at it. another good b-side idea. that's how generous i'm feeling right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFxbgdkD9i8

they will NEVER be as great as this, but that's okay! at least they're fucking trying! what the fuck have you done? (sorry, i always resort to minor threat lyrics when i've had too much coffee.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ouBnu9AQcU

CAUTION: POLITICALLY INCORRECT TRIBAL RHYTHMS AND JUNGLE NOISES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9zfNlV_Fio

(morrissey was soooooooooo taking notes when that album came out...)

Ever read this, Scott?:

Frontman Bid's arch vocals gave the band a wonderful camp quality, and it was probably his lyrical smarts that alerted a young Morrissey to their presence; they were even one of his favourite groups before he formed the Smiths. Johnny Marr recalls first meeting Morrissey and flicking through his singles collection that Morrissey had whittled down to just 10 seven-inchs. Along with some girl groups and T-Rex, were the Monochrome Set. This must have impressed Marr, because they too were one of his favourite bands.

i never read actual confirmation before! you can totally tell though. it's very obvious.

didn't see your R.I.P. thread, alfred! just started one on ilb. nobody will care there either.

Read The Embezzler; I just did.

i never thought of the 'blakes got a new face's as a caribean/african/whatever thing, seemed more like a standard pop music vocal trick thing to me. there aren't (as m)any of those goofy amateurish moments on 'contra' and i kind of miss em. on s/t it was like they sent it off into the world before they had time to comb it over, this one's maybe been scrubbed a bit too clean.

Really? I don't think it's atrocious, or anything, but those group backing vocals on "Blake" feel to me like they're starting to replicate a kind of west-African harmony singing, which ... that's one point where certain sensors start triggering. Being a new-wave / indiepop group that learned a few neat tricks from elsewhere -- that's great. Trying to provide what "elsewhere" provides -- not so much. But yeah, that's sort of the last time -- maybe the only time -- I've felt like they stepped on that line.

yeah but those vocals are great on the little break near the end when there's the coughing noise so