Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

will it work embedded ? these shows look like they were all tonnes of fun

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nope

i would like to apologize for my spoon trolling. i was a little drunk. i kinda want a subaru wagon. my mom has one. maria's dad has one. it seems like half of massachusetts has one. they last forever! and they are good in the winter. and they could hold a lot of records.

mileage on those things is not so good man

Was listening to Contra again today and thinking that it reminds me in odd (not strictly sonic) ways of the first The Sundays album I guess - uplifting simple but widescreen indie-pop I guess. "White Sky" and "Run" and "Giving Up The Gun" feel rushy in the same fashion, I think.

27 highway/19 city for new outback. is that really bad? i don't even know. i'm not up on cars to much. and some models fo better. like 29/22.

x-post

people still adore that first sundays album. all kinds of people. that thing has serious staying power.

It's my favourite indie-pop album, no question.

iono man my dad drives one of those and he always complains about it, but he complains about a lotta shit so

ANYWAY, i think Run is the best track on this tbh but i haven't worked out why

probably the sweet fake horns

God, I love the first Sundays record.

i really like all the songs on the album except "giving up the gun" & "diplomat's son"
- k3vin

after soaking in the album, i think these two might be my favourites.

just listened to Contra for the first time yesterday and it struck me that they've pretty heavily incorporated the super-manipulated synth sounds of Batmanglij's side project. That was the most interesting thing about the Discovery album, and it both simplifies the overall aesthetic of VW and takes it in a slightly more avant direction

(can i just rep here for the sundays' drummer without deliberately drawing any contrast with, you know, anyone in particular... but he's a good example of a good drummer in a band that you don't really think of for the drumming, unless you really listen to what he's doing and what it does for the songs.)

(can I just say that's sort of how I feel about VW's bass player? cf "Holiday")

(i'd respond but i'm trying to cut back on bashing vampire weekend's rhythm section because it's not a very fulfilling hobby. need to take up stamp collecting or something.)

Dang, I was trying to read this thread and I started scrolling down fast. The part about the Jam was cool, and I don't know what I think about VW's last album, but in a few hours I have to go back to work and hear the new one around 3 times at the big box book store I work at.

So in conclusion. B&N is playing the hell out of the new Vampire Weekend album, along with Elvis Presley, Charlotee Gainsberg, some angry acoustic guitar lady, and some lady that knows somebody from the Decemberists.

Ps, I will ask the receiving manager if we can turn up the VW when it comes on so I can figure out if I have an opinion.

Which is to say, I've enjoyed it and haven't begun to hate it yet as background music. It is getting a good push, and I'd rather hear an interesting band pushed than the bizarre sub-Coldplay no-hopers they made us listen to last year.

lol hard: with a vengeance

i haven't bought this album yet but i am listening to pelican west right now and that will have to do until i can find VW on vinyl. i have to go all the way to newbury comix in amherst for new vinyl.

I'm starting to wonder if this album is actually a vague concept album about rebellion against class roots - hence the way the album title takes the key word from "I Think Ur A Contra":

- "Holiday" seems at least in part to be about middle-to-upper-class people fetishising freedom fighter/revolutionary iconography etc.
- "California English" seems to be about a college (or post-college) rich girl slumming as an educated liberal fauxhemian.
- "Run" seems to be about flight from social strictures (but premised on access to inherited money)
- "Giving Up The Gun" seems to be about someone who has lived as a bohemian rebel but now is stuck in a rut and doesn't know what to do.

Unfortunately I have no idea what the other songs are about ("I Think Ur A Contra" aside) so I have no idea if they might fit this. "White Sky" seems just to be a celebration of the glittering emptiness of Manhattan?

I was vaguely hoping that "Diplomat's Son" was literally about an affair with a diplomat's son - in some ways (assuming the diplomat is from overseas) an epitome of the un-strictured, privileged and protected but whose interaction with the upper-classes is fleeting and not weighed down by long-term expectations. Unfortunately a google of the lyrics suggested my interpretation was totally off.

part of the problem is the garbled quality of a few lines, Tim, but you're not wrong. In the Rolling Stone interview Batmanglij rewrote Koenig's lyrics to make them more explicit.

*in the RS interview Batmanglij admits to rewriting, rather.

intentional vagueness passed off as insight

Barack Obama to thread.

hahahaha

memo 2 john d this is how u amusingly zing b obama

I drive a Subaru wagon, I love the first Sundays record, and now, at last, I have a reason to give Vampire Weekend some serious attention.

the end of human civilisation as we know it:

http://www.abeano.com/blog/new-vampire-weekend-ruby-soho-rancid-cover-and-minimix

i dig it. vocally i'm wondering if the vampire weekend dude was a big fan of sublime.

I completely reversed that and was imagining the world in which Brad Nowell shoots up his last while listening to Contra.

lol ruby soho lyrics make for eerily convincing vampire weekend lyrics

What do y'all think of Vampire Weekend?

they are quite good.

if you like haircut 100 you should like them. they could use a horn section though.

they should name their next album Santeria In Sag Harbor.

digging the first album now; I'm generally at least a couple of years behind w/ pop culture stuff so I missed all this the first go-around. The drumming is pretty bad, though; like "Oxford Comma" is a boss song but the accelerating drum thing at the end sounds garbled and it always distracts me.

I love Contra--and it's a far step above the s/t--but the critical "conversation" surrounding it has more or less made me realize I'm completely burnt out on rock criticism. It's been good, though, because now I've been spending more time digging up a bunch of songs I used to listen to when I was first getting into music twelve or so years ago.

I'm completely burnt out on rock criticism

And you're what, twenty-one? You have a long few decades ahead of you.

Temporarily, Ned, temporarily. (I'm 22.)

Which means you can legally get drunk to forget criticism burning you out.

http://drunkensocks.typepad.com/

Meanwhile, one Mr. Xgau speaks:

http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Rock-Roll/Smart-and-Smarter/ba-p/2154

his column runs on bn.com now??

For many months now.

Good column. The Jonas Bros analogy was nice.

"This is all still privilege. But it's no closer to ruling-class power than it is to the affluence of the average American geekboy who gets to insult music he resents online."

Heh heh

A great, great piece. Also, an interesting link to this old Banning Eyre interview, where he proves that not all world music experts have to be myopic dicks, a la Howard Male.

http://www.afropop.org/multi/interview/ID/142/Ezra+Koenig,+Vampire+Weekend.+2008

does xgau call anyone "fatso" in that?

(for ref - sometime i read christgau and am amazed... )

Jenny Lewis gets described as "strictly gorgeous," while her male indie analogues get "belatedly exuberant" and "mildly emo."

He calls Koenig "cute" several times, bro.

i dig it. vocally i'm wondering if the vampire weekend dude was a big fan of sublime.

― scott seward, Monday, February 8, 2010 10:54 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

read some interview recently where they were talking about going for a cali-ish sound and specifically name-checked sublime