Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

listen to the song "boston" by vampire weekend. that is 3rd wave ska.

it's called "ladies of cambridge." it's not on the album.

oh

they renamed it to make it doubly preppy-sounding.

dreaming of boston is a total downer

i live in cambridge so fucking thanks, vampdire weakend.

And "A-Punk" is ska in a Police way.

haha chaki u mad again

boston is way more preppy than cambridge massachusetts which is waht theyre talking abt

I didn't even notice the great line in Bryn until this chick pointed it out - http://media.www.michigandaily.com/media/storage/paper851/news/2008/01/29/Music/Preppy.Sure.But.Who.Cares-3173537.shtml

max dude DO NOT f w/chakis ska trust me

P.S. QN I don't know many indie kids who would have much problem with Ween and TMBG associations -- I don't know about the really young ones, but those two are standard middle-school / high-school / college listening for plenty of indie non-kids.

Also the "four/five" years bit is weird -- the done thing in the 90s was to call out post-rock for being not THAT different from listening to jam bands or Medeski Martin & Wood or whatever, and the past four/five years have been well past the point where the indie masses turned off on all things Tortoise-like

xpost - yeah Chaki we are talking about the same song, Boston/Cambridge. You could call that kinda ska-ish, sure. I just can't remember hearing that sort of thing anywhere else on this, though -- lemme try and think over it

is it funnier to call a faux mighty mighty bosstones song 'boston' or 'ladies of cambridge'?

def boston

maybe the lyric should have been about 'the middle east'

"A-Punk" is the only song that sounds ska to me.

good use of scare-quotes

xpost

If the keyboard player were Ethiopian instead of Persian, his last name would mean SON OF BATMANG

xpost - wait, yes, I see what you guys mean -- "A-Punk" is like two-tone without the upstrokes, yes

max i dont think you understand my posting style at all because i am rarely mad about anything. god.

you come from 'cambridge', xxp

I like the album a lot, but when they're not using specifically W. African-y elements the clean guitar and rhythmic sensibility reminds me more directly of a lot now-forgotten ska bands I saw in Jr. High School than an indie-juju hybrid.

I Stand Corrected isn't musically all that exciting, but it's a pretty buttoned-up lyric too.

african music /= juju

'newton'

I think these dudes are honestly the same dorks in high school/college who still play 9th-wave-ska 10 years after the fact, but somehow they've been able brand their style Little Miss Sunshine/Wes Anderson indie lite.

No shit, gabbneb. The African elements remind of juju more than any other African genre I'm familiar with (I'm not trying to argue this point, just explaining) and I wanted to be more specific than "African music".

tell me there is not a 9th wave of ska

I'm assuming Boston/Cambridge got cut from the record for just sounding awfully lightweight -- I can't decide if it's good or bad that this means losing the funny bit at the end where he goes all Rick Moody with "a morbid streak runs through the whole of my family." It's probably for the best: that's like one of those Morrissey things where it's amusing if you like them, Stab Him Please if you don't.

We should turn this thread into another classic ILX "who knows more about world music" pissing contest.

CHAKI I DONT THINK U UNDERSTAND MY POSTING STYLE BECAUSE SHEESH

xp: I'm hardly trying to start a pissing contest; I have pretty limited knowledge of "world music", it just seems like referring to African music in this context could lead to including all sorts of things that don't really have much to do with VW specifically.

isn't world music what you listened to in the 80s after breaking in your new "cappuccino machine"?

http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb56/Drakhirdrak/LOL%20Pics/STFU-Stop_Posting.jpg

i duno this thread is pretty funny now. like why am i even here?

I thought they played kwassa kwassa - but maybe that would be too obvious.

Dudes I think they buy random compilations and go "that's a cool rhythm, we should put that in the chorus." Not trying to dis their listening -- who knows, maybe the know the stuff front to back -- but I can't imagine them shooting to know much about any particular style, as opposed to just picking up bits of ideas

what's their faces were kind of like this. that band i can't remember the name of that all the indie kids like in 2001 that made me go "uh?"

oh dismemberment plan

I don't think there's anything wrong with ska or having a ska sound (I have well-worn albums by Rancid and the English Beat in my collection) - but to me (and I'm far from being an expert) ska is basically just one beat, and the thing with Vampire Weekend is that they use lots of different beats, I think.

this is like dismemberment plan but new. and more ska. but pinback is pretty fucking ska if you ask me

anyway I like XTC more than any of this shit. because I'm old

and XTC >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Vampire Weekend

That's one that never occurred to me, actually -- I could hear something like "A-Punk" on Drums & Wires easy. Only a little more complicated, and with some sort of tricky bridge somewhere.

The Squeeze reference uptop was pretty on point.

Yup.

i <3 squeeze

Also the "four/five" years bit is weird -- the done thing in the 90s was to call out post-rock for being not THAT different from listening to jam bands or Medeski Martin & Wood or whatever, and the past four/five years have been well past the point where the indie masses turned off on all things Tortoise-like

I don't know many folks who had a problem w/MM&W in the 90s. Back then they weren't a part of the jam band scene, really. They had more in with that whole East Cost Rykodisc/fringe Knitting Factory scene: Morphine, Cul De Sac, Wayne Horvitz, etc.

I'm not talking about "all things Tortoise-like." I'm talking about the intersection of quirky indie pop, world music, reggae, and electronic dance music as epitomized by Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance, Aa, Akron/Family, etc. A lot of fans of these bands would scoff at comparisons to jam band culture, hippie drum cirlces, the quirkiness of TMBG (Yes, a lot of people think TMBG are totally bogus). But it's there and it has been addressed in more reviews (usually negative ones) than I can count. To AC's credit, they are pretty upfront about their days as Phish/HORDE fans. But a lot of their fans simply aren't, it seems to me.

I'm kind of seeing this thing first hand. I recently moved to Asheville, NC, which is a real Arthur town. Around here a lot of kinds who seem to dig indie music/"freak folk" can't stand the jam band culture that's dominated the city for years. Yet they all dress like straight up hippies!

The Indestructible Beat of Soweto>>>>>>>Black Sea>>>>>>>Congotronics>>>>>>>>>The Video For "You Can Call Me Al">>>>>>>>>>Macha>>>>>>>>>"Me & Julio Down By The Schoolyard" Scene from The Royal Tennenbaums>>>>>>>>>>>Style Council's Clothes>>>>>>>>>>>>>A Certain Ratio>>>>>>>>>>>>>Vampire Weekend

Oh, sure, I'll get behind that, QN -- I guess the indie-hippies' protest would be something like "but no, don't you see, we're all MYSTICAL and MYSTERIOUS," because they want to be backwoods acid-damaged CRAZY hippies instead of feel-good jam-band bros

There is a geography thing going on there, I would say: that particular freak thing seems to have taken off in some places and not in others. I can't imagine seeing much of it in the Midwest, for instance. But NC, SF, LA, yes