Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

"Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" Vs. "ZZ Top Goes To Egypt"

wait when were they on da cover of spin ?

In further summary, Vampire Weekend are STILL a band from New York.

Replace "Spin" in this thread with "Option" and everything makes a lot more sense. In the early 90s, it took cute little indie bands quite a while to work up to the Spin cover level. But you could get an Option cover in '85 with quite a bit less label muscle/money behind you. And I think that's about where VW are.

I'm curious as to what other bands' debuts garnered such a lengthy thread in such a short time in ILM's past. I can recall M.I.A.'s Arular being a pretty huge thread from the get-go. What were some of the others? Lily Allen?

Ha, Whiney, maybe we've found the slipping point: what exactly are you interpreting as "SERIOUS BAND 2008," as opposed to "HEY, FUN BAND LOADS OF PEOPLE WILL ENJOY 2007?" I can't say I've seen a shred of press on these guys that offers anything in the way of "mindblowing" or "amazing" or "future-of-music" praise -- as opposed to a lot of gushing about how their sound is charming and their album is the sort of all-day basic (etc.) described above.

Although speaking of young-band, I can't believe I'm going to say this just days after their debut is released, but the new songs they've been playing make me fear they're going to try and get actually-more-African, which is not the best idea for them at all! They've got time, though.

I meant 2008 that second time.

They're just a big fuckin' deal right now!

Rumored Spin cover, Spin lead review, TWO reviews in the Village Voice, tons of coverage in the New York Times and NPR, Pitchfork endorsement, 700-reply ILX post, bloggers being bloggers

And the consensus is that this is "just the beginning"

OPENING SOON FOR THE ROLLING STONES
8 MILLION GRAMMYS
PLATINUM-LEVEL RINGLES
VAMPIREWEEKENDMEETSCLOVERFIELD.COM

Or not.

You're evading my point, dude: why does lots of press coverage equate to "SERIOUS BAND," as opposed to "well-liked band?" Not to sound cheesy here, but ... people are also interested in hearing about bands that win their hearts without changing the universe! And the job of the press is not solely to gatekeep for universe-changers, but also to inform people about acts they may be really fond of.

Ha, "it's just harmless fun" vs "no, warning: this thing is more powerful than you can even imgagine!"

REMEMBER BACK WHEN U GUYS ONLY USED TO TALK ABOUT TRADITIONALLY-HYPED BANDS LIKE M I A ???

More like the Beatles of 2008!

I feel like I'm allowing the point that they're somehow harmless/ordinary/interesting, where I don't entirely concede that -- I think they're that sort of band, kinda, but obviously I find them pretty interesting, too.

Vampire Weekend storms the line of demarcation that separates indie pop and soft rock, and the crowd goes wild!

You're evading my point, dude: why does lots of press coverage equate to "SERIOUS BAND," as opposed to "well-liked band?"

Could you imagine They Might Be Giants getting GLOWING reviews and ENORMOUS features for their first album, even if they were popular among the 1986 equivalent of people that look at blogs?

I mean Widespread Panic is a "well-liked band" but they're certainly not a CULTURAL EVENT like this is shaping up to be.

Lillith Fair, Freak-Folk Fest, Cape Cod Clambake...

CULTURAL EVENT

dude cover of spin and two reviews in the village voice does not a cultural event make

once again, i find myself wishing i could raise one eyebrow in a quizzical way.

so fuckin' average.

I'm looking forward to them shifting influences a la Beirut and doing an album of cockney-knees-up influence tinged stuff.

These guys only ever make me want to put the Dirty Projectors on, for some reason.

this is a pretty fucking big album

i mean it's outselling jack johnson on itunes right now

in terms of debuts, what's been bigger (i.e. most heavily bantered about) this decade right from the jump? you're looking at lionized early decade nyc stuff (strokes, interpol, yyy etc.) then what m.i.a. or arcade fire? even arcade fire only jumped off because of pitchfork and m.i.a. didn't lead review in spin. that may speak to accelerated hype cycle, but i still think it says more about the band/album.

really. that eyebrow is straining.

yeah i should note that jack johnson is a pre-order but still

These guys only ever make me want to put the Dirty Projectors on, for some reason.

Their singer was a Dirty Projectors associate / touring member, I believe!

Which is why it's befuddling to me that band that SOUNDS like weirdo-novelty '80s college-rock trifle (flirts with world music, quirky cutie-pie lyrics about things like grammar, ska parts) is being taken as SERIOUS BAND 2008.

haha what SERIOUS BAND 2008 doesn't sound like some '80s college rock trifle?

also what '80s college rock trifle wasn't treated like a serious band? shit, people thought Jason & The Scorchers were important.

how can a band that sounds like PUNK ROCK be having a #1 album in the early nineties? HOMINAHOMINAHOMINA!

btw, is that just some random month from 1989's College Rock Top 30? Key Lime Pie came out in september '89 and "Pictures Of Matchstick Men" was the #1 modern rock hit in november '89. if that was a year-long tally, I'm sure it would have placed above Band of Susans.

I mean, if that covered the entire year, I'm sure New Order beat the Dickies.

ok yeah according to the jpg file name that's the July 1989 Top 30. Good job proving nothing!

"Pictures Of Matchstick Men" was the #1 modern rock hit in november '89

To the spincovermobile!

That's still like giving the Butthole Surfers the cover for "pepper"

The list was just showing that CVB was like on some third tier of bands in comparison to all that was going on in 1989. Good job zinging nobody!

I never said they'd get the cover of Spin, I was saying they were as big as Gene Loves Jezebel.

I'll give em that.

I said CVB were too hot, you said they were too cold, while in reality they were juuuuust right.

we should get back to making fun of Vampire Weekend and the people who can't say anything about them other than they're really good writers! just so good they're good! so good everybody talks about the fact that the guitar player refs afropop instead.

also does jimmy buffett fit in this? do people like him for his rich mix of influences or just that his music is really really really pleasant and good?

People at my college paper in Florida listened to Jimmy Buffett. I would always ask, "Are you a tourist?"

http://www.itrafik.net/IMG/jpg_0103_good_charlotte_a.jpg

Looking more closely, I just think that you're fundamentally placing VW in the wrong drawer here Chris. Sure, VW have some quirk to them, but "pepper", tmbg, cake, cvb? They're not exactly telling jokes or smirking through their words. As nabisco has said, the relative simplicity of their music doesn't scream "urgent and key"-- they don't go for the emotional nourishment thing that kids get out of your Death Cabs or Belle & Sebastians, or the We Are Important bombast a la Arcade Fire or U2 or the serious sonic explorations of any number of bands. But they seem to be mischaracterized here, condescendingly patted on the head and lumped in with those more haha groups just because they also immediately hit a listener's pleasure zone.

Instead, I think they're essentially off-kilter, upbeat guitar pop, with-- in comparison to their peers-- something singular about both their music (e.g. not just the touches of African pop but their willingness to use space and let the songs breathe a bit) and their lyrics (detail-heavy, expressive; too bad they're images of wealth instead of poverty, otherwise they'd be critical manna): And that characterization seems to be more in line with, say, REM, Madness, OJ, Femmes, Squeeze, XTC, Blur, Pixies, Spoon, Supergrass, Strokes, etc.-- bands that, at least eventually, made inroads with audiences. Not saying they're as good as those bands, but that seems to be what the people who like VW get from them, not this Camper/TMBG notion.

So yeah, I get that indie pop is this indie stepchild-- and that indie's had a long, slow, often punchable post-Nirvana road from punk/hardcore to the worst elements of college rock (you can't toss a rock across the blogosphere without hitting two dozen interchangeable examples of collegiate, bookish, drab MOR tunesmithery), which although VW are almost a parody of "college rock" on paper, they don't make me yawn the way 90% of blog bands do. Instead, I personally really do find this record extremely refreshing and even singular-- for very uncomplicated, sometimes even uncritical reasons-- and apparently so do a lot of ppl. (aka nabisco otm in this thread)

hell, I don't even mean to claim that all those bands (REM, etc) are good - but this seems to be where a VW listener would bracket the band. Those are the other groups that one might get the same sorts of things from that they're getting from VW, not friggin Cake!

so, what hard working fully-deserving blue collar band of high school graduates that released an album in the last week of january did Vampire Weekend steal all the thunder from ?

if VW recorded a "Big Time" or "Sledgehammer," it might sound like "I Turn My Camera On."

"boston" = "ladies of cambridge" - maybe they used the former title in the UK?

sorry if you don't get them, hate fun, etc. lol, they're gonna be hueg.

-- gabbneb, Sunday, January 27, 2008 12:11 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

yeah because obviously the boston in new england was an original coinage and not named after the town in lincolnshire where the settlers came from.

lol

so, what hard working fully-deserving blue collar band of high school graduates that released an album in the last week of january did Vampire Weekend steal all the thunder from ?

-- tramp steamer, Saturday, February 2, 2008 2:08 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

Blue collar? It's a service economy now - where you been?

Baby-boomer blogger Bob Lefsetz weighs in:

Last night I caught Vampire Weekend on the Letterman show. They were awful. It used to be important to be first, to be on the cutting edge, to KNOW! And those who knew weren't so interested in letting the hoi polloi in on their newfound favorites, but they laughed when the mainstream finally caught on. There was a clear division between who and what was hip, and the unwashed masses. Then, in the late MTV era, the mainstream and the hip merged. We all watched the same shows, we all reveled in the economic run-up of the late twentieth century. Then the Internet era hit. We're on media overload. No one can keep up. Everybody's an expert in their own little niche. Still, there are those who sit on high, mostly baby boomers and fortysomethings, divining what is hip, what is cool. Only this time, they want to let you know how cool they are. They want to TELL YOU! Used to be it took years for a band to reach public consciousness. Now it might take a month. From insiders to the casual listener, within that period of time, we can all know. Because of modern communication methods. Furthermore, there's no screening process, no winnowing of the wheat from the chaff. Everything can be served up right now. It doesn't have to break through because of its essence, the hype can deliver a ray of light to almost anything. And when you take a look at this something...too often you're disappointed. Used to be I didn't want to feel out of the loop. I had to be on it. But that doesn't make any difference anymore. Oh, I might be interested in the news, Microsoft's hostile offer for Yahoo, but when it comes to art, everything's fresh when I find it. Whether it be today or two years from now. Still, there are people dunning me for not being on it, not being in the know. Didn't I get the memo? Like a baby boomer rock critic yesterday. Chiding me for only picking up on "Raising Sand" this week. Well, that's not exactly true. I was aware the album was coming out long before it was released. Heard some songs I didn't love on the radio before the album hit the store. Even had a disc copy. I didn't want to spend the time digesting the record, not based on what I'd heard already. But, eventually Sirius served up a track and I found it. When I was ready. That was fine for me. But not for the prognosticators of cool. I was behind the curve. I could turn this into a pissing contest. And speak of what I'm following, what I'm up to the minute on. But that's not the point. The point is we're all following our own muse, our own interest, with 300 TV channels and an endless Web, never mind video games, cell phones... I feel self-satisfied that I didn't fall for the Vampire Weekend hype. I laugh at those who've been trumpeting the act, like it's the second coming. THIS IS IT? You're spending all your time working THIS? Yes, the trendmongers need something to hype, to make themselves feel good. The rest of the world tunes in, for a brief moment, and then tunes out. Sure, an occasional work is great and sustains, but almost nothing does. It's like the movie business. Films are here for a weekend or two, then gone. You remember who you went to the theatre with, maybe even what you ate, but not the flick. And those flicks you do remember seem to start off off the radar and grow slowly, like "Juno". The cognoscenti weren't on "Juno". The newspapers weren't saying to watch for the opening weekend gross. Small movies can't make it. But this one did. The AUDIENCE BUILT IT! So those of you trying to generate buzz, trying to be first and superior, that game is done. We're just looking for SOMETHING good. We don't care if we're first or last, we just want fulfillment. Kind of like that anti-Tipping Point screed making the rounds. Used to be that trends were started by individuals and grown from the center. But now there is no center. If you believe there's a center, you're missing the point. There are a thousand points of light. Growing slowly. Will they all merge into a homogeneous whole? Maybe. Maybe not. And, if not, that doesn't mean the work is substandard, just not ubiquitous. At this point in time, if I'm being worked, if all the hipsters are hyping me on something, I'm turned off...