Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride

kinda deflated that this is where their production ended up after modern vampires tbh

That's what happens after six years. Imagine if they'd issued their Aerial.

i've seen a few folks around the internet suggesting that HH sounds too MOR or commercial

what specifically is it about the older records that kept them from feeling commercial/MOR? the highlife guitar? the synths on contra? the distortion on MVOTC?

i think the song rules personally but i'm also fascinated by the social baggage certain sounds accumulate in peoples' minds

kinda disappointed by both. HH leaning on recycling a previous song's refrain is just distracting.

Dig both of these songs. Can't wait to listen again when I'm not at my work computer with mediocre headphones.

I didn't hear "Finger Back" until someone pointed out, actually.

Aw... I was so excited to hear new stuff from them AT LAST !
But very disappointed... HH sounds like the opening song for a 90s romcom...

kinda disappointed by both. HH leaning on recycling a previous song's refrain is just distracting.

rappers do it all the time

the problem with it in this case is that now Fingerback is stuck in my head, not HH

xpost on Ottoman, Ezra recycled the "feels so unnatural, Peter Gabriel too" line from Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

this is a much better pair of singles than the first two we got for MVOTC

uh neither of these touch “step”

otm

Who ever said HH sounded like Touch of Grey is way too otm

Seriously that solo tho

Like both these songs

xpost on Ottoman, Ezra recycled the "feels so unnatural, Peter Gabriel too" line from Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

I’m not annoyed just perplexed, and as a meta touch within the context of the double LP might be cool

whether or not it works is up for debate but it seemed pretty obvious to me that that was done for artistic effect

i actually really liked "Harmony Hall" on first listen. not sure why it's so unlike around here.

i think everything everyone is picking out in harmony hall (the solo, the dead vibe, the piano, the meta chorus) has been done with extreme intent. it's an incredible song and i hope the rest of the album is this worked over because that's what vw does really well.

it's very pretty

yeah i'm liking it despite going in skeptical that they could make me care again

i don't hate it!

I expected to not care one bit about this, but HH is a very nice song that I might listen to a dozen times over the course of my life.

"harmony hall" is a little fractured structurally and some of the vocal parts are not his best, but i personally love the production

that said i like "2021" better

it all kinda reminds me of dirty projectors a bit, at least as far as the guitars go

& i guess longstreth played on hh

After a few more plays of HH, it's not as bad as I first thought.
I still don't find it great (nowhere near their previous singles) and am still disappointed after 6 years but the production/arrangements are more vivid than on MVOTC and it does sound good (especially the bass/drums with a kinda madchester groove !).

Loving 'Harmony Hall', like you know how when bands try and do a 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' thing and it's usually rubbish? This actually pulls it off.

I liked 'Modern Vampires' a lot as well but I feel like another indie pop record with multicoloured synths and huge clattery drums is the last thing the world needs right now.

re: madchester and "you can't always get what you want" i definitely thought of "movin' on up" on first listen

"harmony hall" feels exactly where they should be at this point in their career - a little more relaxed & not as frantic or with as much of the tightly wound baroque flourishes, a good way to mature

Yeah MVOTC lacked the baroque keyboards/strings as well as the afro guitar licks and a general lightness.
It's good if they go back to these key aspects of their sound.

MVOTC still had some of the baroque aspect ("step" and "don't lie" especially, which were some of the stronger tracks) but lacked that general lightness from the afro guitar etc. and i think that contrast was fairly key to the first two albums. "harmony hall" is a return to that lightness but not quite to the same degree which is what i like about it

yes, I totally agree.

All I can think about is how Brad Paisley married the actress from Father of the Bride and then wrote a song about how he married the actress from Father of the Bride and titled it Back to the Future.

Liking "Harmony Hall" a lot. It hits enough positive touchstones for me ("Movin' on Up" was the one that immediately came to mind) and combines them in an interesting and catchy enough way to stand apart. I also didn't notice the "Finger Back" quote until reading it here, but that's not one of my favorite songs on MVOTC. "2021" doesn't do much for me, but seems like a song that may have more purpose for the flow of an album

k nvm i love both of these. excited for the rest of the album!!!

2021 sounds kinda 1975

Feels like a slight move back towards the bubbly synthetic touches of Contra. Is it me or has his voice/singing changed (seems a bit more generic somehow)?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkPWqnTWj38

Wow he still looks so juvenile. I could say he’s like 22 or something !
Will watch the whole intw later, thanks for posting it.
As for his singing/voice on HH, I find it’s the same as it was. Same inflexions and even melodic touches.
But the generic/MOR impression might come from the melodies that I find a bit lazy (hence my initial comparison with a 90s romcom opening song !).

what happened to his hair and sartorial sense :(

The intro and verses are very nice (both melody and guitar licks). The chorus and instrumental chorus are feel good enough and by the final it’s groovy/fun. The piano and guitar solos are great. The prechorus is the part I don’t enjoy much.

I think it’s just his « radio » look !

his hair looks the same

he once believed in gel

He probably knew he'd be wearing headphones that day, and planned accordingly.

He's 34 years old and has a brand new baby. He's probably past the hair gel and boat shoes? (Also, who cares?)

I actually think he wears his pyjamas in that radio intw !
Especially as they say it's very early in the morning...

(Also, who cares?)

ahem

To stay on sartorial issues : the baggy flashy sweatpants here are a strange combination with the with shirt/overcoat...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDLZ90Oc8FY

c.30 and 18 - this is common knowledge? that's fucked up

a succinct summary of the history of rock n' roll

yeah and it was repulsive when journos were enabling/covering for this stuff in the 60s/70s from artists who openly bragged about it (some still do)

this is supposed to be a more sensitive era with more sensitive bands and media but it often feels like the most radical change is in the marketing

at the time they were just seen together a lot and there were rumours, and then a few years later tavi implicitly confirmed they'd dated in her book i think it was

even if he hadn't done anything untoward, it showed extremely bad judgment on his part, and now it's possibly worse than that

there's other artists who've done similar stuff recently, matty healy dated an 18 year old when he was 27 which is again at the very least quite bad judgment, it's bleak

Men are generally not emotionally smart enough to understand that when you are 30 dating anyone under 23 is not a good look, I can't imagine how someone who has a #1 album at age 24 is supposed to live in something other than a total moral vacuum.

Yeah the "rich but not famous" part doesn't really sound square tbh. I don't know how rich he is, but I'd say he's at least as famous as he is rich. He definitely didn't need her to get into New York parties in 2015. He is most likely one of the other ones she talks about, though.

yeah that's my read of it too

I think it complicates things that she says in the piece that she doesn't want him named or canceled, so I don't know what kind of statement he could make at this point (although she must have known the speculation that would ensue).

i think it's weird that this person i've never heard of wrote a thing that names no one and the guy from VW is supposed to do something about it?

This all is gonna make the announcement that Woody Allen will be playing clarinet on the next VW album that much more awkward.

well if alpine static hasn't heard of you why bother

This all is gonna make the announcement that Woody Allen will be playing clarinet on the next VW album that much more awkward.

― "what are you DOING to fleetwood mac??" (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, March 8, 2021 9:20 PM (fifty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Guilty lol

I’m still baffled that there’s been no press mention of the fact that the drummer and bassist of this band don’t appear to have played on the album at all.

Like, even if everyone in the bands is cool with that reality, it’s weird that it isn’t mentioned anywhere.

All that said - I have somewhat of an allergy to bands where it feels like the front person plus whoever, where the interviews come down to that person and that person doesn’t even mention band mates.

if you scroll up a bit, there's something a bit more urgent pertaining to this band that the music press should mention

(though I get why they haven't for legal/ethical/journalistic/etc. reasons)

Nbd but I don't think that's true, I think it's the band rhythm section of everything unless otherwise noted

Murgatriod, yes, I am quite aware of that and I agree. Hopefully it didn’t seem like I was trying to minimize that story. And, yes, I’m quite aware that my revive was pedantic and won’t matter to anyone else really

Jordan, it’s just really weird to look at album credits (online and on the physical CD) and encounter absolutely zero reference to the band members other than the leader.

Online it seems like they're primarily writing/production credits, not performance credits (except for the guests)? But yeah it's a weird omission.

It makes Rostam Batmanglij's departure more understandable, when he talked about having his work "stand on its own."

Like the implication it needs to be recognized outfront and on its own instead of potentially buried or uncredited altogether.

I thought Modern Vampires made clear that in the studio Koenig and (before he skedaddled) Batmanglij did most of the playing and programming.

Rostam’s solo stuff is great - on par with any of the VW stuff but a little more sonically adventurous. His new singles are getting me excited for the new LP.

No way -- the lyrics and singing aren't halfway as interesting.

Yeah from what I know his work has the former guitarist from a famous band gone solo syndrom : the music can be interesting but the vocal/lyrical side is weak...

I dig it.

This song I've never heard before came up on Spotify, and I assumed it was a song by Vampire Weekend, specifically, from this album, that I didn't know. But it's not, it's a song by the Jerry Garcia band from 1978!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YZEEQdpPzg

haha, nice

Yeah they were sort of open about the Jerry Garcia influence on this album and even played a lick from china cat sunflower on their cover of Post Malone’s sunflower - and they also played bits of their own song “sunflower” in it.

Iirc some Vampire Weekend members even played with The Grateful Dead in a concert tribute to Jerry Garcia.

Yeah, and I remember reading an interview with Ezra where he said this album was musically inspired specifically by the Jerry Garcia Band rather than the Grateful Dead. This makes total sense after hearing "Rubin and Cherise"

Whoa, so I was actually right! I thought maybe this was one of those things where it sounded identical to me but it was some idiosyncratic thing about my ear/brain.

Yep

“Father of the Bride” isn’t total dad-rock; it’s got weird beats and processed synth sounds and samples of tracks by Hans Zimmer and the Japanese electronic musician Haruomi Hosono — evidence of the “adaptability” that led promoter Craig Nyman to book Vampire Weekend as one of the few rock acts (alongside Post Malone and Billie Eilish) at September’s Life Is Beautiful festival in Las Vegas.

But pay close attention to “Stranger” — especially the little instrumental section after the second verse — and you’ll catch an undeniable whiff of the Jerry Garcia Band.

“And I’m talking JGB, not the Dead,” Koenig said. “That’s an important distinction.”

https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/ct-ent-vampire-weekend-feature-0507-story.html

Gotta assume that's influence from his Time Crisis co-host (who has a Grateful Dead tribute band)

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/grateful-dead-phish-vampire-weekend-members-on-jerry-garcia-tribute-177078/

It was the drummer Chris Tomson in 2012.