Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

ha, I am more bothered by how out of tune the backup vocals get than I am by the lead singer

this dude isn't my favorite new vocalist or anything but he certainly knows how to write for his own voice

That SFJ article on Brighten the Corners is apt. Pavement did often deploy signifiers of upper-middle class privilege in their lyrics (which were at least as abstruse and literary as Vampire Weekend's). They made the class connection quite explicit in "You Are a Light", off their following album. Malkmus sings about a university exchange program: "Senior year abroad/I ripped the pea out of the pod/In store for three months of exile in Spain/Where was the danger?" and then rhapsodizes about a fast car: "I drive a stick. Gotta love it. Automatic/Everybody's gotta ride in something". That last line especially, with its languid wistfulness and self-aware irony, is proto-VW.

Have not read this yet, but there's an interview up on PopMatters:

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/119497-the-kids-dont-stand-a-chance-an-interview-with-vampire-weekend/

The interview's with their drummer, actually.

Hearing them today (in the background at Borders) made me think that the Graceland comparisons weren't just facile, but that both really do contrast the average-white-guy voice with the instrumentation.

Well, I’d never played drums in a band before this (Laughs). That was because, the first couple of practices we had I was supposed to play guitar. But we kinda couldn’t find a drummer and I could kinda play, so I thought I’d try and do something.

I hope I play parts that are fairly unique. But at the same time ... I don’t really know what I’m doing, in some respects.

Awesome!

drumming for me in general is like... a huge plus if it's AMAZING (like say, on the first bloc party album) but otherwise rudimentary drumming doesn't bother me at all. i guess i think of spoon who doesn't have a great drummer but mics their drums well and gets great sounds, which is cool.

that live version is great -- & ezra is wearing sneakers

a lot of people and drummers think jim eno is an excellent drummer though

i probably don't know shit about drumming idk -- i can't think of any spoon song where i'm like "holy shit the drumming!"

i think a lot of it is how well he blends into the songs and how he really lives by the band's commitment to minimalism and economy in his drum parts. like there's nothing "complicated" about the drum part on "the way we get by" for example but i can remember every single fill he plays in that song.

i think spoon's drumming is impressive to me because the band as a whole seems so drilled-down. britt daniel doesn't do much on guitar either but they do a lot of rhythmic interplay with simple elements. it's a more-than-sum thing

i guess when i said "not great" i meant "very economic and tight"

actually i think "trouble comes running" from the new one is kind of remarkable because he's actually going kinda nuts for most of it, i guess because it was intended to just be a demo?

that live version is great -- & ezra is wearing sneakers

lol'n

even people who think they don't care much about drumming would notice the difference if vw had a really good drummer, imo.

(but i think there's been a general devaluation of drumming in general in a lot of indie rock. there are good drummers out there, but an awful lot of bands seem to see it as sort of an afterthought. or that's how it sounds to me, anyway. bass playing too, for that matter. devaluation of the rhythm section. o god i'm rewriting that sfj essay...)

this thread made me think i might like spoon who i had never gotten before and based on a couple of youtubes i could be more into them than i thought i would be, i mean are they something i would like?

ehhh, i don't think so?

no one really dislikes spoon, per se

(i know that's not actually true but)

some people like "don't see what the big deal is" but spoon are deliberately low key so it follows or something

even people who think they don't care much about drumming would notice the difference if vw had a really good drummer, imo.

― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, February 2, 2010 6:43 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is 100% true for their first album and like 10% true at best for their 2nd i think

¿r u saying no then?

try

"paper tiger" or "you got yr cherry bomb" or "the way we get by" or "i summon you" or "the beast and dragon adored" or "1020 AM" or

drumming is better on the new one, but ... well why go into it all again. i just think they'd be a better band if they had a really good drummer. but i still wouldn't like them probably, so who cares what i think?

who indeed

they do a really great job of compensating for a mediocre drummer on this record (great drum sounds, lots of cut-up live drums mixed with lots of programmed beats, hardly any straight live playing)

― rinse the lemonade (Jordan), Thursday, January 28, 2010 12:41 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

spoon are safe and unremarkable and there are a lot of people who take comfort in that sort of thing. they are good snuggie listening.

http://bobbeckstead.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/SnuggieGreen.jpg

hmm i kinda maybe need a little more novelty to get hooked tbh

The ghost of my snuggie still lingers.

who indeed

― plaxico (I know, right?), Tuesday, February 2, 2010 11:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

lol

If you want to get into Spoon, check out Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, which is quite excellent, and only about 36 minutes long.

The closer, "Black Like Me," is probably my favorite Spoon track.

eh i think the thing abt these guitar pop records is that you cant guarantee someone will like them, i mean its prolly like with Its never been like that, you either click with it in a way that elevates it or not, you cant talk someone into liking it bc its USP is pretty negligible yeah?

In general, I don't think it's possible to talk someone into liking something. The most you can hope to do is talk them into listening to it enough that if it's something they're meant to like, they'll give it enough of a chance for it to click. But you can't guarantee that it will click.

yeah i think that its pretty hard to point out something abt this that might make someone listen to it with a different intention, like when my friend libby was like "oh hey, did you notice that taylor swift is an awesome lyricist" and at first i was like really but then i was like yes u r right and the lyrics became the key to how i liked it. Like i think most things have some novelty factor that often works as a point of entry for getting it, like with phoenix its that it sounds like a formica version of the strokes, and that bateman blankness becomes the punctum i guess, but most of these bands peddle a variation on a theme, and just bc i obsessed over something quite similar doesnt mean im gonna really be that bothered with listening to spoon (or not i dont really know, but its not grabbin me str8 off)

Give them time. Some days (not just snuggie days) nothing else will do.

If you want "novelty", the two most sonically novel Spoon albums are Kill The Moonlight and the new one.

Boy, am I glad we're not talking about Vampire Weekend anymore.

Spoon; Vampire Weekend of 2010?

i think you can totally be talked into liking/disliking things & it happens on ilx all the time

agreed. i often listen to things for the first when i'm in a bad mood and doing something else at the same time, and then decide i don't like it for the longest time and invent some moronic reason about it--it's nice when someone comes along and talks some sense into me.

still like this but man "diplomat's son" is a miss and a half

how so?

maybe i need another couple listens to process it but it seems totally formless and boring--i don't think this band's sound palette is interesting enough that they should do long instrumental passages, and then the vocals come back in really briefly at the end which sounds like it's supposed to be a gotcha moment but instead just seems weird and incomplete.

I like how the sweetness of Koenig's falsetto fails to mitigate the hardness of the lyrics; he can't separate how awesome his experience with this guy was from how cruelly they treated each other.

i'll read the lyrics closely but still think these guys should not do 6-minute songs

yup

i love the melody on that -- i think of the last three songs on this CD as pretty much one song

still like this but man "diplomat's son" is a miss and a half

this is the only song on the album I like! and I like it a lot!