Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

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

from that popmatters one:

Some of your bandmates have mentioned that they feel Contra is sort of a California album, or a Pacific Coast album. Could you elaborate on that a little?

I think that was more of a conceptual theme. Some of it has to do with the fact that we recorded this album in New York in a pretty standard New York spring, where it was rainy and gray and the idea of California was very exciting at that point. I mean, a lot of unique bands come from California that we get inspiration from like Operation Ivy or Sublime or whatever. I would say it makes a lot of sense to us but it might be hard to point to anything more specifically. I’ll just say that “California loomed large.”

He's gone on about Jenny Lewis at length elsewhere. (xposts)

did a GIS for ezra koenig. ok-ish from certain angles, hints of cuteness snuffed out by "what the actual fuck are you wearing". SHORTS? seriously? fuck off.

i mean, those specifically patterned shorts, on stage, i don't have like a vendetta against all shorts ever

"indie purists" have bad dreams about bridge & tunnel types

pretty sure he'd argue that "strictly gorgeous" is a music thing not a looks thing.

"Indie purists" *don't* have bad dreams about bridge & tunnel types?

I figured as much, it's just the sort of thing at which I immediately bristle.

so much x-post

not sure i'm right, but the band members he describes sound to me like kids of people who if need be could pick up the phone and talk to someone who matters if not right away then a few phonecalls down the line. i don't have a good handle on how close to the ruling class the average online geekboy is, but the internet is pretty democratic these days.

but it's stupid to get hung up on that when this is mostly about the music. it's a great piece. "koenig is smarter than you haters" is lame tho.

i'm all right with xgau calling jenny lewis "strictly gorgeous" cos i'm really skeeved out by men of my demographic losing their sense of propriety talking about her, plus her band is not very good.

Nah, Matos is right and I feel bad for bringing it up.

I like the piece a lot, but what do people think about Christgau's claim that "Historically, syncretism has been the main way pop musics have evolved"? I mean, I get how, say, Bob Wills or Elvis or Donna Summer or yeah the Beatles were syntheses of musics that came before; not so sure I get how, say, Louis Armstrong or the Velvet Underground or Joni Mitchell or Black Sabbath or Kraftwerk or the Sex Pistols or Pavement were (well, I suppose Sabbath could be heard as a synthesis of horror movie soundtracks with '60s hard rock, etc., but I don't think that's how most people have heard them.) An interesting claim, but I'm not certain it's as obvious as Bob seems to imply in that paragraph.

Yeah, I agree. Sometimes pop music evolves through syncretism - ie., introducing elements borrowed from other genres, styles, traditions - but other times it evolves through refinement of a form's existing elements, or because of changes in music technology, or for other reasons entirely.

The key word is the adjective "pop." That's how I read it.

maybe in those cases, the synthesis had already been explored by other artists, but the ones you mention just had the talent/opportunity/whatever to take things to that next level? i mean, with louis armstrong for ex., it's been pretty well documented how early jazz evolved (to be reductive about it, african music + european instruments & harmony + collective improvisation), but he was the first guy who really had the chops to be able to carry the spotlight as a soloist & frontman.

xp

xhuxk each of those artists you mention look to me like they syncretized ideas from outside music. like, VU = 60s garage + 60s avante-garde downtown art ish, for example

Exactly, which is why xgau's choice of adjective matters.

VU = 60s garage + 60s avante-garde downtown art ish, for example

This doesn't really tell you anything about VU's actual music though. What does avant-garde art sound like? We now say it sounds like VU, but that's only because VU made music that sounded a certain way and they branded it as being somehow avant-garde and arty. Before VU, the thought of mixing garage rock with avante-garde art wouldn't have suggested anything in particular.

So I think these kinds of formulas make for fun rock critic parlor games, but I think they're too abstract to really explain anything about how music evolves. I think the term "syncretism" needs to have a fairly concrete meaning to be useful, which should relate to mixing together clearly defined elements of different musical traditions.

Before VU, the thought of mixing garage rock with avante-garde art wouldn't have suggested anything in particular.

which is why VU are successful and/or important. nobody would have known, before hand what modernist/surrealist poetry + american folk traditional music would have resulted in, but know we can just say, bob dylan. people try things, and if it works, before you know it, it just seems natural

i guess i don't have a problem with "fun rock critic parlor games." what other SERIOUS BUSINESS are they supposed to be up to, anyway?

"but NOW we can just say" i mean

I have no problem with fun parlor games either (that's a lot of what ILM is about after all). I'm just saying that we shouldn't let these kinds of amusing formulas fool us into thinking that we are explaining something about how music actually evolves. These formulations are entirely post-hoc. They don't explain how it happened, they are just a way of making connections after the fact.

These formulations are entirely post-hoc. They don't explain how it happened, they are just a way of making connections after the fact.

well i think the explanations of why things turned out the way they did, the processes at the time, are a lot more contingent and frankly half-assed.

right place at the right time, i was just trying to get laid, i dunno seemed cool at the time, i was ripping off this other thing but kinda did it different, we just kinda got lucky and it sounded good

^^ this is "how art evolves" sad to say!