Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

so, in summary: haterz ="this is boring music; i dont like to listen to it"
loverz ="omg why r u so hung up on class signifiers?"

i don't know how to listen to vampire weekend right

^^^ oa tee yem

x-post

maybe a change in wardrobe will help:

http://www.mpumalangatourism.info/history/images/ndebele_sept05.jpg

Hey, it's just good pop! The only reason writers are constantly bringing up signifiers is that there's evidently no way to describe what makes a good pop album a good pop album aside from saying "it's just a good pop album!" And when indie rockers say an album is good pop you know its good pop.

Like, you know, Imperial Bedroom and shit.

And when indie rockers say an album is good pop you know its good pop. unmemorable but cheerful

This was the top album in Rhapsody this week. Followed by Tom Petty's Greatest Hits. Wild.

Vampire Weekend = Momus fans, apparently. But not the inverse.

http://imomus.livejournal.com/350070.html

LOL
momus doesn't like anything unless he thinks it's 'weird'

besides, when they said 'fans' they were talking about his writing and not his music

"Often, long after the initial, rebuffed contact from these artists [AND LONG AFTER THEY'D BECOME SUPER-FAMOUS AND SUCCESSFUL], I'd realize that they really had something."

lol @ momus posting a black dice youtube there. remember the thread where he was the last person to find out about black dice?

Momus really comes across like a dick in that post.

(ill go ahead and get it over with)

"in that post"

I was waiting for that. Hell, I almost threw that in myself.

I'm glad Momus has come to grips his lack of any real talent artistic success!

"but it's cool, because i don't want to be famous anyway, so nyah"

Momus makes some pretty good music. I just think he's ridiculously stubborn and contrarian as a person (taking from 2 years of reading his blog).

Momus hasn't had an original idea ever and lives surrounded by sycophants.

I love the Kwassa Kwassa song.

4 0 accident-free days

Huh. A struck-out 4 looks exactly like a regular 4. Who knew?

?

I know, right?

???

4

5

????

four

/: -[

I'm late to everything.

Just listened to this record for the first time, and spent three tracks feeling guilty for liking it as much as I do. (That was never a problem with Arctic Monkeys -- I honestly don't like them.) I had to get over it, though. This record is kinda irresistible. I will put songs on mixes for people and if they have not heard the songs, they will email me and say "I really like that Vampire song!" because it's that kind of record, too, apart from also being really good.

I will read this thread now.

Ok, I have changed my mind. I will never ever ever read this thread, you people are all kind of evil.

http://imagec08.247realmedia.com/RealMedia/ads/Creatives/TheVoice/vv_amiestreet_feb-mar_728_addval/4848.gif

Reading the arguments pro and con Vampire Weekend makes me believe that critics are slowly draining what little life is left in the music industry.

avoid the present perfect tense as much as possible, please.

LOL.

I just hate that the narrative of these indie bands rise and fall has become so formulaic: every now and then there is a new element such as myspace that temporarily feels like its put a new spin on the basic plotline. Then, almost as soon it becomes so integrated into the cliche as to feel invisible. I feel like being an indie music fan nowadays is very similar to being a soap opera fan, both fans seem to relish the predictability that has become so hardwired into the indie rock band template.

It's funny how just seven years after The Strokes and the claims of returning rock to it's seventies glory days of CBGBs we have this: Coming hot on the heels of the New York Noise book, "Turn The Beat Around" and a whole gamut of articles written recently, there seems to be a sudden mass acceptance that New York is no longer the "glorious shithole" that fostered punk, disco, no-wave and the whole art/pop cross-pollination of the downtown scene*. Vampire Weekend have been made into a trope for the fallout of the Giuliani era. The whole issue of their wealth is even more debated than it was with the Strokes, after 9/11, New Yorkers didn't want to dance*; now, apparently, they don't want to rock either.

*received "wisdom"

That's a roundabout way of saying I like them, they remind me a bit of a Pitchfork-ed Clang of the Yankee Reaper, to say nothing of the obvious Graceland touchstone. Popmatters managed to miss the point, mentioninging them "bigging up the dreaded reggaeton", missing the point of how alive they sound on pop radio surrounded by Kelly Rowland, Rihanna, Britney, Hot Chip (the only other indie band right now who really manage that pop effervescence), The Dream, Timbaland etc. Especially compared to a whole raft of shitty english indie-pop right now (Kate Nash, Scouting for Girls, Mark Ronson: blood lust is unexpected, and troubling).

"the dreaded reggaeton"

o_O

exactly

HEY THIS GUY IS A PARTICULARLY INTERESTING WRITER AND HE WROTE THINGS ABOUT THIS VERY BAND:

http://www.elifbatuman.net/2008/01/28/beautiful-shirts/

http://www.elifbatuman.net/2008/02/04/against-music-reviews/

the dreaded n+1

if that's you, btw, I've actually started reading your piece on Best American Short Stories and I'm enjoying it.

You'd probably like this thread:

in every 'new yorker' short story ever...

The part about music criticism is great, except for one thing: I think it presumes that music critics are mapping sociopolitical stuff onto the music in a sort of vacuum. Whereas I'd say that the seeds of it already exist in the basic teenagey self-definition stuff that people play out with music, using bands to form cliques and take social sides; the error with criticism, usually, is trying to treat that self-definition stuff as if it constitutes real, actual, concrete sociopolitical meat.

Another way of saying this is maybe that a lot of the "class" issues with this band are playing out in terms of self-definition -- the desire to take the side of grit and danger over elegance and comfort -- which means that shades of sociopolitical stuff are being acted out in the reception, but not that the music being made equates to that stuff, or is a concrete political act. (I can see how it's interesting to music criticism to write as if that's the case, as if the music actually IS the moral and social stuff it instigates, but that's just not quite right.)

There's also the weird habit of treating records as if they need to do everything at once; I guess I've also said a million times upthread that criticizing VW for lacking grit seems to me like criticizing a souffle for not being spicy enough. (And I can understand the impulse, if you feel like everyone's constantly being served souffles, but that doesn't make a particular souffle non-good, etc.)

HEY THIS GUY IS A PARTICULARLY INTERESTING WRITER AND HE WROTE THINGS ABOUT THIS VERY BAND:

http://www.elifbatuman.net/2008/01/28/beautiful-shirts/

http://www.elifbatuman.net/2008/02/04/against-music-reviews/

-- tramp steamer, Tuesday, February 19, 2008 5:35 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

haha, I wrote Elif Batuman an email after reading that piece in N+1, too. I was about to write a mock scathing of the post until I did a Gmail search.

Re; the souffle thing - I'm not seeing many people serving souffles at the moment though. There seems to be a lot of cheese on toast.

Thank you to whoever called me a particularly interesting writer! For the record though, I'm not a guy. xo Elif

I think there's another explanation for whatever class resentment you see against VW, and even moreso against The Strokes. Popular music, in its ideal, mythological sense, at least, is something many people have traditionally liked to think of as the sphere of the working classes, a sphere where people from poor or modest means rise to the top on their grit and energy and honesty and fire-in-the-belly.

If VW aren't rich rich, they're certainly privileged and they certainly come off as privileged. And somehow success appears to come so quickly and easily to them, almost to the extent that you'd think one of them had a well-connected parent like the Strokes did. And they may have no such connections, but that's how they come off. And to make things worse, they actually sing about stuff we associate with privilege, and if there's an irony to it, it's not the biting irony of satire, but a more gentle, almost blank irony. So even if there's a bit of tongue in cheek, the overriding message is still "We are privileged, life is easy for us, and thus we have easily become successful even in what was once for people of other classes."

And maybe that's not a good reason to dislike a band. I kind of hear the same privileged easiness in Mozart, for that matter. But I don't like Mozart. But I could probably come up with a better example if I thought about it long enough.

good post until I hit 'message', xp

gabbneb OTM. I don't hear how singing about Oxford commas, college campuses, Peter Gabriel, and girls signifies privilege.

I don't define "popular music" like you do either, Hurting, since popular music consists of music which a large percentage of its audience can buy.