Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

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.

lol what don't I "get" gab?

you think it's about a "poon cruise"

I think this is one where the music says as much or more than the lyrics do, but let me have fun with those for a minute...

Is your bed made? = Is the sound clean?
Is your sweater on? = My Brooks Brothers is feeling incredible
Do you want to = You guys are part of this too
Like you know I do = This is so much fun

But this feels so unnatural = We know we're taking some chances here
Peter Gabriel too = But that old guy did it too

Can you stay up = Shall we go, you and I while we can
To see the dawn = Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds
In the colors = But we want to include everyone in this
Of Bennetton? = ;-)

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

No, that wss me that invoked "mumbly", and by that I didn't mean like classic-"slacker" brand of inarticulateness (whether of the deliberate variety or not), but more that their music brings to mind trying to conversate with a friend who is so guarded or something that he doesn't wanna give up the goods, and as a result nothing of real consequence ever gets expressed. But at the same time, you know that it's in there somewhere, which makes it doubly frustrating.

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

What about if they borrowed from the PG of "Big Time" and "Sledgehammer"? A horrifying thought if you're Xgau or other boomers whose sensibilities don't like gauche dick jokes punctuated by Motown horns, but possible for an indie act now.

man if kwassa kwassa is meta rather than a come-on i have even less respect for them

LCD Soundsystem should totally go for a Sledgehammer/Big Time on album number three

don't put it past them!

man if kwassa kwassa is meta rather than a come-on i have even less respect for them

supplies. it's both, really. tho ironic distance might be closer than meta and i think it's a little charming for a come-on.

"Someone Great" is their "Mercy Street," a little.

xpost - CCKK doesn't seem "meta" at all, but Anthony, I'd note that the girl in it is only "young" in the first half of the first verse, and collegiate by the second; besides which what follows close on the "do you want to" is ... "but this feels so unnatural."

The main recurring topic I see here is people leaving where they are and/or changing -- in "A-Punk," "One," "Ladies of Cambridge" ... and then the opposite in "Campus," where the other person is still always right around and you have to pretend not to care.

xpost - I feel like I'm being waved away from the point with words like "anemic" -- what bands are we talking about? Because this album has a style in both production and songwriting that's a lot cleaner / more spacious than most recent equivalents, nothing but clean sounds and barely an overdub to speak of. I can't think of too many indie bands lately who can go through a section with just a bass part and some sedate drum tapping without sounding ... naked; I can think of a ton of indie bands lately who pile instrument upon instrument in an effort to work up some weight, and wouldn't dream of letting an unadorned, no-effects, clean-channel recording of a guitar or plain electric-piano setting stand out and carry everything.

also the tone of the song is obviously nostalgic - it's a fond evocation of the moment in early-mid college when everything feels most alive and unfolding in front of you

i don't think the girl's age changes, i think the narrator is no longer "young," i.e. has entered the "real world"

"Know your boyfriend, unlike other guys," lol

maybe L'homme run is more croupier's style - http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/download/45430-lhomme-run-vampire-weekends-ezra-koenig-various-tracks-streams

Haha L'homme run is a good argument for not becoming well-known anywhere close to the college years in which it's normal to do things like L'homme run.

(Also I guess we're headed into geeky lyric-interpretation comparisons, but CCKK goes from "as a young girl..." to "as a sophomore...," which I always read as tagging two different time periods!)

you may be right, i may be crazy

haha god that l'homme run thing is just tooo perfect, not that I really feel like listening to it.

that would augment the loss of innocence vibe

xpost - I feel like I'm being waved away from the point with words like "anemic" -- what bands are we talking about?

I guess it goes without saying that this is all gonna veer along the lines of personal prejudice and so forth. My thing is that so many bands falling under the "indie rock" rubric that I've heard in recent years that have either been recommended to me personally, or who I've read a bunch about and then tried to listen to, have just sounded like they are holding back in some way that ends up reaching my ears in such a manner that I am quick to write them off as sterile-sounding.

For instance, bands as disparate and who mine territories as different as say, LCD Soundsystem and Vetiver, I just feel like they are coming from some weird remove...it doesn't have anything necessarily to do with the bare sonics; I mean, I personally find it refreshing if (people such as VW) in a guitar-based band choose to have clean guitar sounds or relatively unpiled-on production on their records. It's more that I feel like they are not giving enough of themselves to the listener, overall...like somewhere along the way there is some obfuscation going on for whatever reason. Which again, is so, so subjective, and based in large part on personal prejudices that I have when I sit down and listen to music. I mean, I am definitely someone who tends to gravitate towards a spectrum of stuff which wears its heart on its sleeve, so to speak.

But then again, I love Phoenix, and I don't think that they are some particularly emo-ish (whatever that means) band...so I dunno. I just feel like so much stuff sounds like going through the motions; to invoke the old thing of "if you're gonna make music, for god's sake at least have something to say"...or the school of "the people who make some of the greatest music have no choice in the matter"...I just feel like those intangible qualities are missing from VW and and other stuff that I would be quick to shrug my shoulders at or even complain about. Maybe this is all some "rockist" take on things. But I don't even think so...again I hear the VW stuff and am just left blank. Could be an old dude, thing, though! That's fair enough.

Dell otm re obfuscation - I think xgau calls this 'formal commitment'. I call it not-worrying-every-five-seconds-how-cool-you're-being.

Oh, I misread - I think the 'anemic' sound is less obfuscatory, obv

In this case. Arg, I really shouldn't do this on blackberry, should I.

i like msuic that meesses with my feelings, or makes me want to stick my dick in thigs. vampire wekeend makes me want to go to connecticut and say 'hi' to my aunt and uncle while watching the 4th of july aprade down mainstreat quietly and respectfully

Not funny.