Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

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...

this fool sounds like a Beltway pundit just back from "Meet the Press."

he's talking balls about 'juno'.

It's like the movie business. Films are here for a weekend or two, then gone.

this is how it always used to be duh. if anything films *hang around* too long "now" thanks to um television, video, dvd.

still he is right that vampire weekend suck.

I know it's a losing battle, but I actually wrote Bob about the Vampire Weekend thing. How he can't respect a band that can emerge from the music industry junk heap is beyond me, but hey, he's still loving that new Eagles album.

I just scanned that whole thing looking for any kind of comment that was actually about Vampire Weekend and/or their music, but I didn't catch any.

I'd forgotten another thing that wound up cut from the Pfork review (I'm bad at word counts): how I'd like to say that the upper-class vibe is somehow irrelevant to their music, but it's not; it's a minor selling point, definitely. I'm not yet sure why this is a problem. I'm not a person who'd ever cut up a goat's head, but if I want to feel a little bit like I am for 30 minutes, I can put on some Mayhem. And while Koenig only sings the phrase "adjust my tie" once on this record, the whole thing does have a sly, urbane, tie-adjusting feel to it. Someone used the word "aspirational" upthread, and yeah: I'm not sure why it would surprising for people to enjoy soaking in a little of that vibe for the length of this record.

it's because rich people are douchebags.

Yeah, that commentary is kind of unfocused and pointless, but I do generally agree with his "this is it?" feeling about them, and I do agree that the changing media landscape seems to have led to a lot of bands being pushed in front of our faces when they could use another 30 minutes in the oven.

xp, lol

REAX: Is the term "prep rock" being thrown around too much in explaining your sound?
EK: It all depends on what they mean by "prep rock." If by "prep" they mean "of or relating to blue and white striped, collared shirts," I'm all for it. That's the kind of bizarre, synaesthetic comparison that I like. If they mean "rock made by people who went to a certain type of American private school," they should re-evaluate. They probably don't even know who the real prep-rockers are. If someone feels strongly that they should know where their favorite bands went to high school, they should start researching.

I do generally agree with his "this is it?" feeling about them

what were you expecting exactly?

I generally agree with my Is This It? feeling about them

^otm

The thing is I can't buy into the aspirational element of Vampire Weekend because I don't find it convincing but I also don't hear a genuinely purposeful sense of irony about it. It's not that I have a problem with high-end brand references and boating, it's that I hear a bunch of kids who sound like they're awkwardly clumping around in their dads' too-big top siders.

I think Lefsetz's problem is that he's looking for 'durable' acts that can generate a career's worth of music. While he's sometimes ahead of the curve on music industry questions, it's evident that his generation really struggles to understand that the future of music is one of uncertainty and chance, with a handful of emergent acts.

but really i think he expected the return of rock 'n' roll from a band named vampire weekend and he got the sperry topsiders of indie rock.

I haven't heard vampire weekend yet, but if he's using Juno as an example of something GREAT that the audience built, then I already don't believe anything else he says.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=E5E1SlBN0jA
This song starts out pretty cool but the vocal is just so amateurish

http://internetvibes.blogspot.com/2005/11/post-hippie-domesticity_11.html

he doesn't say precisely what vibe his parents give off, but one could speculate. my parents just slightly precede the hippie generation, and in any event have never really participated in pop culture, music-wise, but i am well-familiar with the vibe in question.

i could very well be projecting, but my hunch is that at least some of them, koenig especially, have an ironic relationship with this stuff. they encountered it when they went to school with people who are richer than they are, or who are rich for different reasons, or who are where they are to a greater extent because they are rich than because they're intellectually-inclined. why do you assume their parents wear topsiders?

ahahaha that video that hurting posted is like watching michael cera do an impression of vampire weekend

this comparison with nirvana is interesting.. i don't mean the style of course, but attitude to music, idea, freshness.

koenig especially, have an ironic relationship with this stuff. they encountered it when they went to school with people who are richer than they are, or who are rich for different reasons, or who are where they are to a greater extent because they are rich than because they're intellectually-inclined

But semi-privileged kids having an ironic sensibility about even more privileged kids kind of lacks bite.

And the point isn't really whether they are or are not actually privileged and to exactly what degree and whether or not their parents could afford the top boarding school or sent them to Stuyvesant but had private SAT tutors or whatever. It's more that they seem to be striking some kind of pose regarding privilege but I don't find that pose very clear or convincing.

I’ve been listening to the album all weekend, wanting to like it… but, I can’t. My big problem is that it doesn’t seem to have any real urgency or purpose, like the whole thing is too music for people without problems. Part of that is probably the class signifiers, like it’s all just a joke or else a version of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” for people with Italian sofas.

I'm going to stick my neck out and say Vampire Weekend = most reneged on artist of 2009.

perhaps your problem of perception lies in your belief that they are striking a 'pose'

oh come on of course they're striking a pose, in the way that all bands cant help but do. their pose happens to be particularly well calculated and timed, sort of a nanny diaries or gossip girl for boys, and is making people get all in a tizzy taking imaginary sides on imaginary dichotomies like 'style v substance' or 'realness v fakeness' 'sincerity v insincerity' precisely because the pose is so front and center while simultaneously seeming natural and shamless, carefreee. and who doesnt want to feel carefree? i know plenty of people with problems who love VW. i have problems and i dont like them

MO MONEY MO PROBLEMZ

whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat the living fuck does any of that mean

don't trust rich people in Topsiders and no socks.

their songs are not good ok?

Spinning it for the last few days in the car and quite like it. Certainly not a world-changer but exceedingly pleasant. Backlash seems quite out-of-place for the content.

what? 14 hours and no new post for this thread?the hype is over?!
anyway, beside strokes,paul simon,talking heads and spoon, i hear a lot of "raincoats" on this album, and i like it.(and i don't mean on the lyrics of "a punk")

Actually, a bit what Zaxxon said, though in this case I was in someone's car listening to it yesterday. I don't think I'll need to hear it again but it was what it was.

i like tha fact that they don't try to impress the listener.
or at least thats what i feel.
as oppose to many of the recent years "hype" bands.

backlash isn't against bands, it's against hype