New Music Thursday
I'm absorbing Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut right now, and it's a pretty good one.
Vampire Weekend is an indie-pop outfit that stands out from the crowd by incorporating afro-pop influences into their songs. My knowledge of afro-pop is limited to what I pick up when I'm dancing badly while heavily inebriated at Ghana Cafe, so I can't tell you how authentic (if that sort of thing is important to you) their interpretation of the genre is, but it's something I haven't heard before. Different is good, as long as you know your way around your instruments, and these guys seem to.
Vampire Weekend has been getting a fair amount of buzz around the internets and from media like the Village Voice, and the reviews have been pretty positive. I've seen an occasional gripe about the background of the band, being white guys from Columbia University playing afro-pop influenced music, but I'm not sure what that those kind of class and race distinctions have to do with whether the band is any good or not. If you're the kind of person who couldn't respect the Strokes because their lead singer was filthy rich, you might not like Vampire Weekend. You might also be an ass.
Vampire Weekend write a lot of songs about the east coast elite. 'One (Blake's got a new face)', seems to be about a face lift. I haven't decided if the intent is to be tongue in cheek, if the songs are an indictment of the upper crust, or if Vampire Weekend is just being goofy. Really, I don't care. The songs are fun, accessible, and will sound even better when it starts to get warm outside. I can tell already that this album will be in heavy rotation at my backyard cookouts this summer.
You can listen to a few of their songs on their website, but the in my opinion the best of the album isn't available for streaming on the site. If those appeal to you at all, you should know that the rest are even better.
Vampire Weekend is an indie-pop outfit that stands out from the crowd by incorporating afro-pop influences into their songs. My knowledge of afro-pop is limited to what I pick up when I'm dancing badly while heavily inebriated at Ghana Cafe, so I can't tell you how authentic (if that sort of thing is important to you) their interpretation of the genre is, but it's something I haven't heard before. Different is good, as long as you know your way around your instruments, and these guys seem to.
Vampire Weekend has been getting a fair amount of buzz around the internets and from media like the Village Voice, and the reviews have been pretty positive. I've seen an occasional gripe about the background of the band, being white guys from Columbia University playing afro-pop influenced music, but I'm not sure what that those kind of class and race distinctions have to do with whether the band is any good or not. If you're the kind of person who couldn't respect the Strokes because their lead singer was filthy rich, you might not like Vampire Weekend. You might also be an ass.
Vampire Weekend write a lot of songs about the east coast elite. 'One (Blake's got a new face)', seems to be about a face lift. I haven't decided if the intent is to be tongue in cheek, if the songs are an indictment of the upper crust, or if Vampire Weekend is just being goofy. Really, I don't care. The songs are fun, accessible, and will sound even better when it starts to get warm outside. I can tell already that this album will be in heavy rotation at my backyard cookouts this summer.
You can listen to a few of their songs on their website, but the in my opinion the best of the album isn't available for streaming on the site. If those appeal to you at all, you should know that the rest are even better.
Labels: tunes
posted by DC Viking at 11:27 AM
1 Comments:
Entertainment Weekly has a great article in this week's issue ("Tomorrow's Hit Bands--Today!" http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20173778,00.html) in which they interview people who work as music supervisors in TV and movies about their favorite up-and-coming acts.
Vampire Weekend is deemed "most buzzworthy of them all." In fact, all nine music supervisors agreed.
VW is currently sitting on my list of future possible iTunes purchases.
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