Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride

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.

she specifically says she was dating this guy at 18 which apparently lines up with when they were dating

https://www.thefocus.news/celebrity/tavi-gevinson-ezra-koenig/

is koenig a rich kid?

I didn't think he grew up particularly rich, his father was a set dresser for film/tv? Upper middle class Jews?

He would have been rich by the time they were dating, though. But he was also famous by then, so - ????

This is the bit I was looking at: When my abuser said he thought that it was I who “had all the power” while he was a hapless, insecure, wealthy, much-older-than-me man who didn’t know what he was doing, I at first believed him. I was in a splashy phase of my career. I did get us into parties.

That certainly doesn't rule out its being Koenig, and the dates line up. I just initially took it to mean the abuser wasn't a celebrity, but I really have no idea how many parties Ezra Koenig gets invited to; it could very well still be him.

His father is a psychotherapist. His mother was a set dresser: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0462850/

The allegations are sad, and Koenig should address them if they are indeed about him. I know it's tough for anyone to come forward about things like this, but at the same time, there must be a better way of doing it than vaguely identifying someone in a rambling feature about a Britney Spears documentary (where the author doesn't seem to have any direct connection to the film or Spears herself). Then again, I've never actually read her stuff before, so maybe this is how she is as a writer?

Not to quibble but that imdb link says he's Ezra's father.

Not to quibble but that imdb link says he's Ezra's father.

I've been COMPLETELY wrong and got them mixed up. His mother's the psychotherapist.

kind of a muted response

if more comes out will it be like [the other guys] all over again?

i mean in general not singling anyone out

I think it's just sort of hard to know how to respond to an allegation where the person hasn't been named yet, even if you have a pretty good idea of who it is.

idk is he litigious? he is surely aware of online speculation by now

i haven't followed this band so don't know why some people on twitter have made this connection so clearly but they seem to know what they're talking about

a lot of ppl on twitter seem to know what they're talking about

if i were a news organization there's nothing here i'd run with pending further disclosure

doesn't mean it wasn't gross at the time, and there are certainly portions of the text that are ezra-shaped

it's well established that tavi dated him when she was 18 so it seems possible or even likely he's at least one of the men referred to in her piece. not
definite but i very much get why people are connecting the dots

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

if media orgs that have supported this band are withholding judgment on this i hope they stop giving them coverage in the meantime

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