Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride

the songs on here were definitely created with the live show in mind. they're less "composed," arranged on record with the intent give the band more room to breathe in a live setting--J,NY,B is a good example. the negative space allows the players to play in a way that they're not beholden to playing a line of melody that the audience knows by heart. i agree, brad, that the strength in composition isn't as present in the arrangements in these songs (this was what rostam most notably brought to the table), but i think the bones of the songs on this one are very, very strong and it allows them to get away with sparser arrangements.

i agree about rich man. it goes nowhere (tho i do like that ukulele figure enough that the repetition doesn't drive me mad).

OH CHRIST

put me in the 'it's charming' camp. I love the arrangements. this album makes their earlier stuff feel sophomoric by comparison

like, I'm starting to come round to the idea that everything on this album has been thought-through and some of the more jarring choices are very deliberate (even down to the front cover)

re: their earlier stuff feeling at all sophomoric compared to this record: can't follow you there, the arrangements on contra are like dense and intricate music boxes of detail and are the reason it's one of my favorite records of the last decade

I'm the last person to praise Contra as a headphone album but there it is

could write a paragraph just about the number of amazing things going on in "run" alone

song is like a fucking dub remix of itself

in a sense it plays as a vaporwave record yet destroys the genre

top 5 vw songs would be "this life" and whatever 4 songs are my favourites from contra at the moment

Uh oh, I never liked this band, but I started listening to Time Crisis and I'm getting Stockholm syndrome, or rather I started liking this particular album after listening to the ep that goes through all the songs.

I'm into the more stripped-down Americana/Tiny Desk vibe + interesting production touches, not so much the bigger pop songs. I'll have to make my playlist version of the record since it seems like that's the thing to do.

Can one listen to Time Crisis without an Apple Music sun? Cause that track-by-track pod sounds relevant to my interests

I found it on Google podcasts, but I think someone is 'unofficially' uploading them

Uh oh, I never liked this band, but I started listening to Time Crisis and I'm getting Stockholm syndrome, or rather I started liking this particular album after listening to the ep that goes through all the songs.

I'm almost with you. i never liked this band and now i kind of want to like them because i like ezra from listening to this podcast

(i guess it's technically not a podcast)

somebody uploads time crisis to mediafire (lol) on this tumblr: https://timecrisis-withezrakoenig.tumblr.com/

Glad it's not just me, lol. Ok here is my Sunday morning version of this record, which went over pretty well with my partner who also never liked VW:

Hold You Now
Harmony Hall
Big Blue
How Long
Unbearably White
Rich Man
Married in a Gold Rush
My Mistake
2021
Spring Snow
Jerusalem, NY, Berlin

Every double album is too long: I treat this as a kind of miscellany.

(But I definitely wouldn't include My Mistake or Spring Snow on my single disc cut!)

I probably wouldn't either, and I would include Stranger. Maybe it's sappy, but to me it's really effectively sappy in a "This Must Be the Place" kind of way.

Oh my playlist wasn't meant to be a best-of, just the ones that are appropriate for sipping coffee and doing crosswords on a Sunday morning without ruining the vibe.

Oh, that makes sense. Maybe I'll try it out next Sunday morning.

this is me firing shots, primarily at dog latin

VW rereleased Father of the Bride and made it even more unbearable pic.twitter.com/nukazHvA6E

— DJP (@djperry1973) February 28, 2020

I'm here what's going on

might buy the vinyl this weekend and play it and think about you DJP

Have you listened to this Jude Law nonsense yet?

I suppose it comes from his anime series in which J. Law plays a robot valet.
Nothing wrong with that !

Worst album, still good.

i think a lot of the underwhelmed response to father of the bride is viewing it in light of what it fails to do which the first three albums did well. which is unfair, because it's not trying to do those things. instead it has this chill late night studio head vibe going on, which i also find special in its own way.

Sorry to post a link to Fallon...
https://youtu.be/fY6nvPvqpZc

This is an exceptional album you guys.

― YOU CALL THIS JOURNALSIM? (dog latin), Monday, January 6, 2020 4:19 PM (four months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Still is. There's so much to love about it. Hoping people will disinter this one day and hold it up as an absolute classic.

'I don't wanna live like this, but I don't wanna die' has taken on new meaning recently.

thankfully that lyric is also on an album that's better than this one

lol sorry i'm just being a jerk for fun dl

mvotc is better than fotb, but finger back is not better than this life

that’s basically true but do you mean harmony hall

d'oh, yes i do.

ah yes of course, it's on fingerback too which is just okay

i like finger back a lot. could be because i was on the 1 train listening to the song and ezra mentioned 103rd and broadway just as i pulled into the 103rd st station

it was destiny, maaan

heard Harmony Hall playing in the supermarket yesterday, so naturally I had to pull the whole album out. genuinely, I think this album is made for me. it gives me the same 'what are they gonna pull out the back next?' feeling I used to get from when I was first getting into Aphex Twin.
I love how it feels slightly unfinished/unfussy in places but also florid and well-realised. I liked previous albums, but certain tracks on MVOTC are cluttered and chaotic and just not pleasant to listen to.
I also feel like this is their first album where they sound like themselves. Yes, there the old influences are still there, but i feel like they're less glaring. It took a while for me to stop thinking of VW as Paul Simon/GAPDY slash fiction, but this seems more like something only they could have made.
Yeah it's their 'Up', it's their 'Adore', and those fond of their more adherents rock sound will find it flimsy and indulgent. I like it for exactly those reasons

ugh that was all written quickly on my laggy Android phone. Sorry for typos

Contra seemed like pretty distinctively only something they could have made, there's enough brilliant ideas there for some bands to have made an entire career out of

I'm not discounting Contra at all. it's a very good album.

Ezra spoke very well about his thoughts on FOTB's fourth-album-ness on Time Crisis the week before last.

https://timecrisis-withezrakoenig.tumblr.com/post/617840563917602816/episode-120-hbd-fotb

This remains the only VW album I can listen to. I've really come to appreciate it even more though. I think everyone else I know hates them.

surprised no one has mentioned Tavi Gevinson's Britney essay which does not paint Ezra Koenig in a great light, to say the least

That was him? I had no idea.

it is assumed not confirmed

regardless... some real shit there

Just re-read it. There's one detail that makes me wonder if the man specifically referred to as her abuser could have been someone else, and that's the suggestion that he was rich but not famous - she mentions getting them into parties. Not that that would let Koenig off the hook - he's still pretty clearly one of the predators she mentions (the ones who are dads now) which is bad enough. ugh.

it certainly seemed real creepy of ezra when it seemed like he was probably dating her but this development is real bleak, if he's indeed who she's talking about there. stuff lines up well enough to make it obvious to suspect him but it's still vague enough that i'm not certain or anything

It would be very depressing if it turned out to be about him. Listening to a few hundred hours of Time Crisis got me through the beginning of the pandemic, definitely couldn't listen to it the same way again.