A lot has been written about Vampire Weekend in a few short months. Dave posted early on here about the hype (with the smooth title, “The Lost Boys?”), and the coverage has only intensified since then. Moreover, his call out to me in the review, if I’m not mistaken, was due to the poppy/jangly sound of VW, something that seems to have been missed by many Indienet goonies. For better or worse, I typically roll my eyes at the latest NYC indie/[insert some indie review site] band. Even with Dave’s recommendation and my happy initial listen, it took my blogmates going to a show for me to admit I was more than curious.
Indie has become the new rock (this cycle is complete in the UK, and will take longer here) and its continued mainstreaming fuels a constant search for the next act outside that mainstream, just look at the NY Times covering “Black Kids,” a band with a few songs on Myspace in a review that nearly mocks itself. It’s a vicious joke of a cycle. The Brooklyn/NYC hype in particular has been less than stellar. I have both Clap Your Hands albums, I’ve presented an academic paper on what happened with them in Birmingham, England at the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. I certainly do not hold any issues with them, since I view their vision to sign directly with ADA, and not with a label, groundbreaking. Yet, what we have, is a young band with some solid to great songs, and a singer who is a dead-ringer for David Byrne. Yes, there are some great songs, but instead we get reviewers clearly with their hands down their pants. Billboard, as if thinking it needs to trump the review of its Pitchfork/Prefix competitors wrote: “CYHSY is at the best point in the lifecycle of a band: un-styled, simply produced and deserving of the hype for what is — quite possibly — a nearly perfect album..” I’ll let that comment speak for itself. If the debut is the best CLHSY has to offer, no one will be remembering them in a decade.
So, what inspired this rant? That would be reading many many reviews of Vampire Weekend’s debut. I picked up the album earlier in the week, along with four other recent releases. It is definitely the album that grabbed my attention after hours of listening in a near vegitative state on my “hi-fi,” as my Dad would say. But it didn’t stand out because of any secret love I have for Congolese music. The overuse of this angle in nearly all reviews, notably by indie music critics, is embarrassing. What, are we living back during the days of “Graceland” and Deep Forest, when authenticity is ascertained by throwing some stereotyped “un-moderns” paltry recording fees, while millions are reaped by white musical elites? There’s a lot of lazy reviews going on here. We’re a blog, this isn’t our livelihood, yet our reviews are better than many of the sites throwing around shit about VW being some Congolese-worshiping indie mistros. As Jason commented in replying to Dave’s posting, “I don’t hear much of the African influences in the two songs posted.” That’s because there wasn’t on those songs, and there’s not on much of the album. Yes, there are some, notably the constantly mentioned “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa.” But, I wonder how many of these same critics realize The Police used reggae rhythms. This isn’t genre-bending. These are Columbia-educated smart kids, intelligent musicians who have heard different styles, and they’ve chosen to intermingle them in very traditional pop trappings.
The last bit, is what really got me rankled. VW sounds A LOT LIKE early 80s jangle pop. I thought I would read that in review after review. I didn’t, instead I read about the Congolose Appreciation Society at Columbia, and how they formed a band, and wear nice clothes, sing about commas, and are producing music that is simply uncategorizable. Actually, it’s pop, jangle pop more precisely. My bet: all the free press CDs and press materials say the same thing about African rhythms, or something about Columbia’s excellent ethnomusicology dept. Again, lazy writing. Thankfully, not everyone missed the obvious comparisons:
Greg Kot writing in the Chicago Tribune:
“But in general, this is clean-cut new-wave music that echoes the chattering guitar lines and agile percussion of the early Talking Heads and Feelies.”
And, while also pointing to the common African mentions of critics, Popmatters gets it right too:
“Most predominantly among those sources are the high life sounds of King Sunny Ade, the jangle-and-strum dalliance of The Feelies and yes, though you have probably read this in every other review of this album, the Afro-metro ascensions of Paul Simon’s Graceland and, perhaps even more so, “Shaking the Tree”-era Peter Gabriel.”
One observant comment on Stereogum made by “kidacomputerok” (we’ll forgive his name) comments:
“I liked them better the first time when they were called The Feelies.”
Yes. These guys sound a lot like the Feelies.
Continue reading ‘A Jangly Rant: From Vampire Weekend to Sordid Humor’
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