Vampire *fucking* Weekend

sodiumnightlife

sodiumnightlife

Sweet Virginia
I'm not trying to defend Vampire weekend here, I really don't like them, but hating on any music just isn't worth it. For me at least, there's no point in expending all that energy on hating something. I wasted too much time when I was 16 hating on people who weren't into the music I was, now i'd rather just like the music I like. Nothing constructive comes out of hate.

And don't say punk did.
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Big up TVgohome and Daily Mail Island!

Yeasayer seem to be getting a knocking on this thread too. Surely '2080' is one of the best 'indie' songs in years, though?
 
swears

swears

preppy-kei
I like the way these guys dress, but I finally heard their music and it's boring as fuck. Apparently whoever decides these things has decided they're gonna be massive.
 
straight

straight

wings cru
swears said:
I like the way these guys dress, but I finally heard their music and it's boring as fuck. Apparently whoever decides these things has decided they're gonna be massive.
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yeah they look good and carry interviews well but i cant help but think theyve got british sea power syndrome as in they talk the talk and have the influences but when it comes down to it they're pretty tepid. People like them because theyve been convinced they are are much more intrepid than they are and quite smug that theyre so much more educated and interesting than kids listening to regular old indie. Post animal collective and broken social scene (ugh) all new american indie bands have 15 members and have some trippy ethnic undercurrents but its all just so tacked on. Every time im round my girlfriends house she has some other new band like this shes been sold in rough trade which on the surface are quite engaging but underneath the songs are really straightforward
 
F

faustus

Well-known member
swears said:
What can we do to raise the price of them doing this? There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? – to say, ‘The Indie community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.’ What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from Camden Town or Oxford, discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their musicians.
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:) yeah i agree
 
N

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
T

tryptych

waiting for a time
I actually really like British Sea Power (or used to - their last two records are pretty patchy) and I'm not afraid to say it. So there.

I'm sure you'll be all really excited to hear that Rostam Batmanglij of Vampire Weekend wrote the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of "crunk" while he was on an internship there. NME also says he's working on a "crunk side project". Awesome! :slanted:

http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?id=1575254&vid=191870

I can't watch that video outside the US for copyright reasons (eh?)

Interview etc here:

http://music.guardian.co.uk/rock/story/0,,2254839,00.html

The other bands mentioned in this "scene", Dirty Projectors and Yeasayer are much better IMO.
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
straight said:
yeah they look good and carry interviews well but i cant help but think theyve got british sea power syndrome as in they talk the talk and have the influences but when it comes down to it they're pretty tepid.
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I don't know, it seems kind of positive that they're widening the gene pool of indie at all. I'd rather have a competent inoffensive band that sound a bit like the Strokes playing afropop than have a competent inoffensive band that sound a bit like the Strokes, it at least brings music from outside the indie tunnel vision into the discussion.

I quite like the fact that they don't pretend not to be posh, too. I don't know if that's less strange on the US scene, though.

My main beef is they just seem very emotionally constipated and unwilling to let themselves go. It also seems vaguely ironic that "their original manifesto pledged to systematically weed out any affectations considered too "rock". Their other rules were "no distortion", "no trip-hop" and, controversially for a New York band, "no post-punk"", yet they come out sounding fairly predictable in a very NY sort of way.
Every time im round my girlfriends house she has some other new band like this shes been sold in rough trade which on the surface are quite engaging but underneath the songs are really straightforward
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Rockist police, rockist police - we have a content-over-style incident in progress...
 
straight

straight

wings cru
there seems to be a new style over substance on the block, skinny jeans and posing have been thrown out the window and replaced with twig hitting chants and attempts at zany noise over shins songs.b unfortunately i forget the names of all these bands straight after i hear them so i cant actually back up anything with proof.

on a trumpet blowing tip, faust all came down to a gig i put on last year and were really nice to me.
 
T

Tactics

BBP!
on a related point

Franz Ferdinand said after listening to a load of East African (more specifically Ethiopian music) music they want to get "all rhythmic" and "do something different"

now that rhythmic point does....me a little bit but I'll wait to see what happens

are we in vogue? what a rhetorical question

peace ppl
 
mos dan

mos dan

fact music
lol at whoever referred to dawn of the replicants, there's a blast from the past.

fwiw beyond the lolworthy nme hype at the time i think the first strokes album is a fantastic pop-guitar album. and it's only 35 minutes long or something, which is rather commendable.

i just listened to a vampire weekend track for the first time. meh. like people are saying, i think the theory that journos are projecting their desire for an intelligent, worldly guitar band onto this fairly mediocre bunch is right. and bsp are the perfect comparison, yes.
 
F

frogger

Member
I've discovered that the Vampire Weekend record is one of those records that I might listen to a lot at first but quickly gets shelved. Its just not engaging enough musically. Too many tracks are simply 'nice' and don't draw me in or make me want to savor them.

I definitely don't consider the record groundbreaking in any way. At its best it just seems like well produced, nicely-structured pop with varied timbres and some dynamics...At its worst its just really bland coffee-shop style music...

Has anyone here actually met anybody who really hyped this record? At first, I must admit I found a couple of songs addictive but it wore off quickly. I feel the same way about the recent Burial record...

Recently I've been listening to a lot of improvised music. Derek Bailey mostly...I gotta admit that when you listen to a lot of this stuff it feels just as formulaic as anything else.

Someone mentioned the Dirty Projectors in a previous post - I find their record has more staying power ultimately, but isn't as immediately palatable...Although I was hooked on 'No More' for quite awhile...

What was the last thing that really shocked you in a good way?
 
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T

tom pr

Well-known member
frogger said:
What was the last thing that really shocked you in a good way?
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Heartsrevolution. Amazing band from LA, i'm a bit knackered to go into why i like them so much but I interviewed them for fact magazine recently, so hopefully that'll be up next week and i'll link it. there's a song called Digital Suicide on myspace.com/heartsrevolution which i have caned ever since i heard it.

there are good new guitar bands around: the ones involved in the Baltimore warehouse scene that Dan Deacon seems to be the figurehead of - Ponytail, Ecstatic Sunshine, Double Dagger and the Death Set (who've just signed to ninja tune's new imprint) are all great. I really recommend Ponytail's album Kamehameha.

There's other DIY punk types outside Baltimore that are really exciting: Mika Miko, No Age, Abe Vigoda, Lost Sounds' album was good too but i'm not that into Reatard... I don't know how 'indie' it all is but that word lost all meaning long ago, and i think they're worth bringing up in the thread.

and definitely agree with you dan - the first Strokes album is wicked.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Slothrop said:
It also seems vaguely ironic that "their original manifesto pledged to systematically weed out any affectations considered too "rock". Their other rules were "no distortion", "no trip-hop" and, controversially for a New York band, "no post-punk""...
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Yeah, all these trip-hop-rock bands around at the monent are doing my head in! :)slanted:)
 
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