edgertor

disinterested 3rd party

I'm preparing my letter to Led Zepplin right now.

disinterested 3rd party

Also, they're getting by in New York like it aint no thang and they come off as rather smug about it. I'd be surprised if they could even tell you how much their own rent costs.

It's also interesting that you bring up The National, especially since I'd posit them as a better antithesis to VW than THS. (Who happened to be on at the moment, but are a separate arguement.) I find The National electrifying because they don't feel safe or static. If anything, they bring me into confrontations with some of my worst fears about myself as a human being. There's a shiver of recognition there that I've found in maybe a half-dozen other records since I first started taking music seriously. They evoke moments that fucking ache like real life. On a formal level, I love the arrangements (More restrained than a lot of what I usually like, but excellent for their economy of motion.) and I think that the lyrics are masterful in their use of repetition and detail. VW sing about a world I only know third hand as if it's wallpaper. Witless irony and self-satisfied in jokes win for their own sake. There's no impetus to transcend the formal imperatives of the pop song, let along to transcend the next crest of the hype cycle.

SuperUnison

I mean no disrespect to Cold War Kids, National, or the Shins. I like them all. I just see them as ultimately being closer to the norm than VW.

gregcoff

And leave Cold War Kids out of this. They're much more ambitious than VW, and they're much nicer to boot.

slowburn

"And blog-era tastemakers often eat their own after the shine's worn off, no?"

Umm...maybe? If they start sucking I guess. I don't necessarily buy into this mythic direction of the blogosphere, or at least not the alleged unified voice it speaks when taste-making. (Partly because I don't count blogs that rehash other blogs or post the hypem top 20 artists with such insightful commentary like - "I totally love this!")

Similar to the opinions some have about the MSM being controlled by an editorial cabal, my hand is forced in calling bullshit!

Swankster

mhulot

It's official. Clocking this a clusterfuck of dumb @ 1:33 AM 1/29/08. R.I.P. inane diatribes.

Swankster

Also @Gregcoff: VW *sounds* like privilege, that's why the assumption that the music is coming from a place of privilege. Radio-friendly upbeat, energetic pop and fun, but witness the danger of blog-era hype, such that even sorta supporters such as myself react to inflated claims and pretentions.

mhulot

gregcoff

@girlhappy: Does that mean you were also spoiled to the point of obliviousness?

@G3K: Thank you. They literally wear the fact that they are soulless, trust-fund assholes on their sleeves.

@gregcoff: A computer and a willing test audience can make addictive melodies (there are seriously only so many catchy progressions) and great pop arrangements (based on the law of averages) probably do happen every day. It's just that Vampire Weekend has lucked into the right combination of those things, competent performances, a "safe" image, and a string of pretension-flattering bullshit that has seen them elevated. They literally represent postmodernism winning the war in all the shittiest ways and I'm very glad that they will probably be victims of their own disposability. I'm thinking #31 on P4k's "Best of 08" list, and probably with a little bit of snideness thrown in (Maybe something like "From back when we thought a the democrats WEREN'T going to figure out a way to loose the 08' election" or something like that.)

SuperUnison

brownham

J DTZR

jambajim

@Jasonbob7: Jack Johnson was actually the first frame of reference I thought of, too. That same sort of privileged-comfort vibe, perfect for drinking Corona Lights and wearing terrible clothing. (I don't think it's wrong to fault us for hating VW's aesthetics since they so proudly celebrate them. So deriding the preppiness is fair game IMO.)

G3K

CloudCarrier

jordan_s

girlhappy

Seriously though at what point does the insta-hating become exhausting? I'm not specifically referring to Vampire Weekend here, but to the negative reactions of other reactions.

Does anyone really care how "sick of the hype" someone else is? For us interweb-connected folks abreast of the latest music web-conversations, it seems weird to claim hype fatigue when a band's album is not even out yet. To omit (purposefully or otherwise) the realization that 99.9% of the world has still not heard a damn thing about this bands to be sick of them yet is selfish at best, and totally drowned in the insider-y lack of perspective at worst. Step away..step away...

Swankster

loudersoft

What's the problem, again?

Halfwit

janine

gregcoff

darewreck

slowburn

But I also don't pay much attention to someone who assumes my purchasing patterns from blog/comment posts so you can take that 'whatever' and put it in your 'standards' pipe and smoke it.

Swankster

SuperUnison

Also, I pay for ALL of my music, so I have different standards than you might.

janine

It seems like some of you guys spend waaaaay too much time worrying about the press-driven (including blogs here) narrative of a band (or music festival!) rather than actually listening to their music (or going to said festival!).

In other words, do you hate everything? If you look real quick it seems the string of hype, backlash, double-secret backlash, pre-hype, post-hype, whatever-hype bullshit is the topic du jour every f'ing day. In other, other words...spoken like true, too-cool-for-school snobby hipsters.

Swankster

jambajim

disinterested 3rd party

StuntKockSteeev

You wanna know what it really makes me think of? Picture it. Oberlin, the early/mid 90's. Several ladies rugby team players keep telling a younger me about an amazing artist called Ani DiFranco. I buy a ticket, and for the first 20-30 minutes, I'm thinking: this is fun! Then I begin to wonder if she knows any other strumming/rhythm patterns. Then I'm looking around, wondering if I'm the only person who's thinking, "tasty but thin gruel." Then I went outside to smoke cloves (it was the 90s).

janine

BillRocksCleveland

gregcoff

joshservo

dog door

Jasonbob7

gregcoff

jetblackturd

I'm just saying there are so many perfectly good reasons to hate something that resorting to "overhyped" and "sounds like ______" is lame.

The Notorious T

And a band with prep-pretension is way overdue. "Pelican West" was 1982!

Also, for the 11 minutes anyone will care about them, the look/sound this is much more fresh than yet more college boys with beards, ballcaps and Les Pauls tryin' to sound Southren [sic].

NickEddy

Boozey

spazandmojo

brownham

mishaps

chim_richalds

I sort of see them going the way of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, ie: nobody gives a shit anymore

but perhaps I'm wrong.

brownham

Also, while we're getting defintions, could someone do "hater"?

OliverTwist

The blogosphere giveth, the blogosphere taketh away. This band will be forgotten relatively quickly.

Also, Bjork? "Front-edge of the avant garde?" Really?

Charlie Kerfelds Jetsons Tee

BigRicks

Could you define 'hater-proof' plz.

Ned Raggett

I'm going to try not to read anyhting else about them for the remainder of the week!

JudgeFudge

Or would it be too much trouble to try and elevate the general dialogue on the internet? I haven't heard this yet but seeing them called out as "frauds" just seems overly reactionary. Not everyone can be Bjork or whatever fill-in-the-blank front-edge of the avant-garde creative genius flavor-of-the-month that we seem to demand from anyone recieving critical praise.

The Notorious T

Maura Johnston

Thierry

...but TELL everybody that I'm "very influenced by Kaoru Abe and Masayuki Takayanagi/New Directions," does that mean that people will refer to me as "a kind of Somerville Shinjuku?"

I'm calling these frauds out. They sound like every other band spilling over with spazzy Williamsburg bullshit. Total weak sauce Lacoste crap.

Charlie Kerfelds Jetsons Tee

natepatrin

I don't know if their debut's been 'forked yet, but anybody want to guess the Pitchfork rating on their sophomore album, whenever that comes out? Do I hear 4.0 or under?

mhulot

MTS

Dick Laurent is dead.

Nice gimmick, anyway. Pretty good to better-than-pretty-good pop songs, too. If they drop the pretensions and cop to what they're really doing, adding simple, African-sounding riffs to very Western pop songs rather than some East Coast-Soweto fusion, I will feel much less guilty about liking them.

mhulot

@Charlie Kerfelds Jetsons Tee: I'm wtih you also. I think I'll be the only person at SxSW who will miss their showcase.

Dead Air ummm Dead Air

What awful, awful music.

Charlie Kerfelds Jetsons Tee

loudersoft