Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

or wait the singer plays guitar too, right? four piece.

if you had a better singer, bigger hooks and a better groove, these guys would really be something. namely "nothing but flowers."

i can kinda get into these guys, y'know.

And, um, what the fuck doesm"angular" mean?)

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 28 January 2008 22:44 (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fa/Wire-Chairs_Missing_%28album_cover%29.jpg

I think they could do with a better drummer.

I mean, how great is that?

-- gabbneb, Monday, January 28, 2008 1:22 PM

Not very.

-- Ned Raggett, Monday, January 28, 2008 1:26 PM

ZING

anyone else want white boys doing afro pop, but with some authenticity in the form of omg actual african's?
http://www.myspace.com/extragolden

i feel kind of weirdly proud of not having an opinion about this band. maybe i'm gonna make it after all.

I feel this burning need to do a poll on who does and does not like "Love Plus One" by Haircut 100

Hahahaha I've been meaning to reference that song on here eventually.

along the lines of "wake me when they record something as good as Love Plus One."

I don't know why but "Hourglass" by Squeeze keeps coming to mind.

THEY'RE SOPHISTI-POP

http://static.flickr.com/90/235126080_19de696493.jpg

man, where ARE the young new wave dorks making pop songs as good as Love Plus One? I mean, shit, the late 90s had LOTS more goofy awesome new wave hits than today, and yet NOW is when we're allegedly resurrecting the 80s and going "ahh yes I see some folks in NYC have discovered Johnny Hates Jazz."

really alternapop, that time between the first Tibetan Freedom Concert and Woodstock III, by way of being really gaudy and ACTUALLY SUCCESSFUL and incorporating newfangled concepts like record scratching and whatnot, was more truly in the spirit of new wave than just regurgitating the ZE catalog for bloggers.

What are you talking about? Len? Smashmouth? Lit?

all that shit between the woodstocks! it was a nutty time.

honestly, Anthony, I'd love a group now who could record a song as good as "Shattered Dreams."

well who wouldn't? too bad we just got indie dicks mumbling/mewling over some sonic signifiers of the era.

Alfred otm.

Depends how important Graceland signifiers are to you. I forgot who said upthread that VW cops the sensibility of "I Know What I Know." Which is at least an honest secondhand appropriation. Besides, are you telling me that Paul Simon-as-vocalist can't be as fey as Ezra Keonig?

(xpost)

steal my sunshine is the bomb

Besides, are you telling me that Paul Simon-as-vocalist can't be as fey as Ezra Keonig?

I dunno if fey is the right word, but Simon sure has more presence on my hits comp. Srsly, it's kinda frightening that Simon and Byrne have, like, GREAT PIPES compared to the new school. Though this kid is pretty young, maybe he'll grow into it. But with so much smoke already up his ass, unless he's not happy just rocking a cult, why would he bother?

I dunno - Simon was pretty annoying as part of a folk-rock duo.

Admittedly, I can't stand S&G. I'm talking about the era these kids are jackin

why can't Ezra Koenig sing more like this man?

http://www.eiain.co.uk/wp/fred_20durst.jpg

Byrne sounded thin on 77, and the thinness was part of the concept. I mean, RISD punk-ass worrying about the government while sneering at compassion as a "virtue" is almost as troubling to a thirtysomething.

that's the thing about the whole new indie thing of "why would we try to be big stars when we can just put out our own albums and make music we love blah blah blah" cuz there's some shit people get better at when they're aggressively trying to court attention. without some exec or an expensive producer to beat enunciation out of them a lot of these novices are just gonna rot on the vine without ever making their one hit.

I love that side of The Talking Heads, flirting with near-right imagery, lol.

xpost

did Tony Bongiovi beat, I don't know, human feeling into David Byrne?

Byrne had a more unique identity than any modern folks from the word go, but I'm under the impression the knob twiddlers on those 70s albums earned their cut.

Well, Isaac Brock and Britt Daniel are two older modern folks who've got plenty of identity. Koenig isn't at their level, but listening to him I imagine what it must've been like to hear 77 for the first time, especially after seeing them live. With all due respects paid to the irony of a hack engineer producing an "art" band, it still sounds plenty thin. What made Byrne at the beginning were songs, not identity; the identity came on the next album.

I'm going to relisten to 77 tonight, but even after 20 years of familiarity with the Heads' work, it still sounds like a band testing a stand-up act, then realizing, on the next album, that they could deepen the act.

The thinness of the vocals is part of why I can't get excited about VW. I also find myself wishing that they would do songs as grate as "Love Plus One", or the JoBoxers song that someone compared their video with upthread. Granted, these are vague terms, but I don't hear much in the way of "passion" or "soul" or anything that would make for great pop music in the stuff that I've listened to by them. To me their stuff sounds like a musical equivalent of someone mumbling; I mean, I'm assuming these guys have compelling stuff inside them somewhere, but it's as though they're not reaching down deep enough to pull it out and express it. They end up sounding as blah to me as so much of other contemporary "indie rock" stuff that I've been exposed to.

Obv VW could improve but what shtick they've got now is a lot less novel, engaging, achieved than the best of 77 sounds even today.

though "not as interesting as the talking heads" is a pretty high fuckin bar to hold a band to, "not as amusing as haircut 100" is more fair.

Here's a point I'm probably going to defensive about over the whole length of this thread: people picking on VW over common "indie" qualities they're assumed to have but really, really don't. So far we've had "intellectual horseshit" and "mumbling," neither of which are even close to major sensibilities on this stuff.

I'd also suggest that people are bringing their own old-people music-knowledge to bear on this band in ways that presume intentions that aren't necessarily there -- like thinking of them as doing some kind of studied imitation of things from the late 70s and early 80s. I mean, maybe that's the case, but I'd offer a much more likely source for this sound: the math suggests these guys would have been in high school when the first Strokes record came out (something you can hear in some of their tidy pop structures, or at the end of "Campus"), and they'd be neither the first nor the last people in the world to hear a couple African pop compilations and think "those are such pleasant guitar sounds, let's use the clean channels from now on."

(Haha plus the one record store next to their campus always stocked a good amount of African pop, and I know because I played lots of King Sunny Ade the year I worked there.)

the math suggests these guys would have been in high school when the first Strokes record came out

sentences like that make my stomach drop out of my body

i never said they were mumbly, that was in ref to indie shit in general. I said they were yelpy and generic.

referencing Peter Gabriel on your chorus kinda helps push the 80s revival thing. they also bring up a bunch of high class affectations in songs about trying to get laid. that's pretty indie.

Wait, which songs are about trying to get laid?

Tomson, a self-described Phish head

http://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/may_jun07/updates3.php

Wait, which songs are about trying to get laid?

the one with the "do you wanna fuck?" chorus, maybe?

tho that isn't quite how i'd describe it

which might be why croupier doesn't get it

goddamn young whippersnappers in their mid-20s, why should I, in my late 20s, have to deal with this shit.

x-post
"Can you stay up
To see the dawn
In the colors
Of Bennetton?

Is your bed made
Is your sweater on
Do you want to
Like you know I do"

I just assumed this was Paul Banks-style art-school "young girl" poon cruise

lol what don't I "get" gab?

"the one" = "songs"

then there's the one about visions of johanna

xposts
Nabisco, I think I understand much of what you're saying there, with the exception of your first paragraph. I swear there is some anemic quality characterizing much of the "indie" stuff of the last few years that has gotten lots of attention that just leaves me cold...a lot of it has to do with bland vocals...and maybe even more to the point, I would attribute my unenthusiastic response to generally blah songwriting.

Also, I guess it just disappoints me that so much of what they get touted for in the press centers around the non-western pop influences, which I can't help but think could be used to better effect. But, obviously plenty of people find them compelling. Personally, I just hear them and think "meh".

and hey I love interpol, I'm just saying More Songs About Prep School Jackets And Girls is pretty frikkin indie.