Finally, right?! Today you guys finally got to hear the album that’s been making people go crazy on both sides of the Atlantic, in every newspaper, magazine, and blog you read. Even Pitchfork can’t resist their Columbian charms, giving the self-titled debut a Best New Music stamp. All the way from Harlem (ha) to the spotlight; it’s a real riches to riches story, and, it couldn’t have happened to nicer guys (seriously). With all that out of the way, there’s only one thing left: the backlash. They’ve been on our radars for just about a year, right? It’s about time.
OK, not quite yet. According to NY Mag‘s crystal ball, the saturation point, which will take the band from being buzzy to being overhype-y, will be hit with the conclusion of tomorrow night’s sold-out Bowery Ballroom show; in other words, tonight’s sold-out Bowery Ballroom show is your last chance to say-you-were-there-when, before saying-you-were-they-when is like totally passé. This is, in fact, what the not-so-distant future possibly maybe holds:
In late 2008, after Vampire Weekend has guested on Saturday Night Live, sold out the Theater at Madison Square Garden for nine consecutive nights, and licensed songs for commercials for every product in Apple’s lineup, Zach Braff discovers a hip, new underground band called “Vampire Weekend.” He adds them to the soundtrack for his new movie, a coming-of-age story about Zach Braff sleeping with whichever currently popular 22-year-old actress is the hottest. He explains in the CD’s liner notes: “Their songs sound like Graceland by Paul Simon, another artist with which I am newly familiar.”
Vulture has the rest of the trajectory which, worry not A-Punk t-shirt owners, includes the all-is-forgiven/backlash-to-the-backlash phase, tentatively scheduled for the third album, after they’ve come to terms with P4K’s 1.3 drubbing of the sophomore effort.
Fun and games aside, Vampire Weekend’s enjoying a crowning moment: they are the Strokes, the Arcade Fire, the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the Arctic Monkeys, the Beirut, the Peter Bjorn & John of the day. The record’s out today — it’s very good indeed — and the tour starts … now:
01/29 New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom !
01/30 New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
01/31 San Francisco, CA @ Popscene
02/01 San Francisco, CA @ Amoeba Records
02/04 Los Angeles, CA @ Amoeba Records
0206 Washington, D.C. @ Rock and Roll Hotel
02/07 Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church
02/08 Williamstown, MA @ Williams College Currier Ballroom
02/09 Boston, MA @ Museum of Fine Arts
02/11 Toronto, Ontario @ Horseshoe Tavern
02/13 Cincinnati, OH @ The Gypsy Hut
02/14 Columbus, OH @ Wexner Center
02/15 Pittsburgh, PA @ Andy Warhol Museum
02/21 London, England @ ULU
02/22 Wolverhampton, England @ Civic
02/23 Oxford, England @ Academy
02/24 Brighton, England @ Audio
02/27 Manchester, England @ Academy 2
02/28 Glasgow, Scotland @ Classic Grand
03/06 Orlando, FL @ The Social
03/07 South Florida Everglades, FL (Langerado)
03/08 St. Augustine, FL @ Café Eleven
03/09 Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
03/10 Birmingham, AL @ The Bottletree
03/12 – 03/16 Austin, TX SXSW
03/19 San Diego, CA @ The Casbah
03/20 Los Angeles, CA @ El Rey
03/22 San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
03/23 San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Shop
03/25 Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge
03/26 Seattle, WA @ Neumos
03/27 Vancouver, British Columbia @ Richards on Richards
03/29 Missoula, MT @ Badlander
03/30 Boise, ID @ Neurolux
04/01 Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater
04/25 Indio, CA @ Coachella
UPDATE: Bowery Ballrom looks like it was fun last night. Anybody go while it was still cool to like them?
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I’m skeptical of this whole “rich kid/preppy” angle. Boat shirts and Oxfords are not exactly some highly guarded secret. Would you buy that they’re from the hood if they wore some Evisu jeans and Air Force Ones? I’m gonna need to take a look at their parents’ holdings.
Oh, and having gone to Columbia, I can assume they’re annoying shits like the other 99.75 percent of the student body. (So I guess VW is a guilty pleasure for me.)
Let’s get over ourselves.
Who cares what Carson Daly thinks of VW?
If you think the music is good, listen to it. If not, the end. Listen to something you like.
ALSO: Luke wins. Why does Pitchfork’s opinion matter in anyone’s music selection? Make up your own mind.
So this is how Stereogum decides to ‘jump the shark’? By devoting a post to hipster blog backlash when it is, essentially, a hipster blog. Interesting. I always thought it would be a lawsuit from Rolling Stone that would do them in.
I don’t get it.
I honestly just don’t get it. How are these new “It” bands determined? What sets them apart from the hundreds of other bands who make similar sorts of catchy indie pop/indie rock? Other bands who may actually be a bit better, in that they are not trying to be something more than a band making music for music’s sake.
Like all of those other bands, Vampire Weekend is good. Decent. Nothing exceptional, and nothing horrible.
Is it just completely chance that makes them the new hyped-over discussed thing?
hipsters. sigh.
VW aren’t pretending to be anything they aren’t. cynics are just projecting their own cynicism onto a harmless band. you don’t have to like them, but come on… they never said they were going to change the world. just enjoy it if you can. if not, well then go listen to your music.
“What backlash? Folks posting comments here? Maybe New York scensters will get all whiny, but that’s as far as it will go.”
haha. so true. you don’t like them I repsect that. You think they are terrible? I don’t know man their are some dangerously catch songs here. I’ll enjoy them with everyone else at their sold out show in March in San Diego.
Vampire Weekend is the Tapes ‘n Tapes of 2008 (or better yet, the Voxtrot of 2008). That’s not a judgement on their music ? I’m actually really impressed by their casual reference to the Malvinas War in “Mansard Roof” ? but anytime a band gets buzzed so much by blogs they’re heading towards a let down.
It’s simple physics: What comes up must go down.
so looks like hating on vw is the new cool. eh, whatever. i like the music (i just think it’s catchy and fun), but i can see how they’ll be forgotten in a decade.
on another note, they have piqued my curiosity into african pop. i’ve been enjoying a lot of african guitar bands such as orchestra baobab and loketo as well as aritsts like amadou and mariam. really sharp guitar playing and there are a lot of really great musicians.
Vampire Weekend is my new favorite band. Sure, I’ve been let down before, but I’m confident that unlike Voxtrot, Tapes N’ Tapes, Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah, The Rapture, Franz Ferdinand, and Artic Monkeys, this band is here to stay!
so they aren’t the next animal collective or fugazi or whatever weird band you’re into. come out of your shell of hipsterdom and just take this for what it is=well written, infectious pop tunes. enjoy them. they’re not pretending to be someone or trying to be classified into a genre; that’s the mistake of the media-generated hype.
they wannabe-indie poseurs pretending they from Africa. fuck these buncha fake-ass mr. me too’s. dismemberment plan sucks too.
I love how everyone who defends VW seems to think that the terms “catchy”, “well-written”, and “fun” are somehow not subjective. Listen, VW’s music = NOTHING factual, only YOUR opinions. This music isn’t catchy to me, nor is it any fun. But I don’t believe that everyone should hold that opinion, that’s the way that VW champions seem to think.
And this “just enjoy it for what it is…” nonsense is completely baffling to me. So now, since I enjoy critically examining music, I’m somehow not a “real music fan”? That’s some really tarded fascist BS. As if your way of enjoying music is the only valid way.
And as for their ‘image’ and ‘ivy league’ness, remember that these things don’t happen by accident to a band. *Every single* piece I’ve read written about them deals with their preppy-ness and college education; reporters don’t just make this stuff up, or even do their own research into the subject. I’m sure that VW’s own press kit makes all the references to Afro-pop and Columbia and their collared shirts. So it’s probably their own fault that their image plays such a big part (and since when has a band’s image *not* played into their career? Why would labels and bands spend SO much time taking photos and cultivating an image, then? Even the lack of an image is an image in itself)
Everyone here states this band sucks for some very obtuse reasons. Or their music ‘sucks’ based on their own personal opinion. Which if you think about it, basically means they don’t suck you’re just not into them. Now if it’s based on their shticky image, fine, but again that actually has nothing to do with their music-just to get you to talk about them, so you’re participating in their own hype when you pro/con their ‘image’. As an actual musician, with a masters degree, I have to say I feel bad for most bands in general. I personally dislike a lot of the music on here because I find it childish, simpleton pap, or dressed up nursey rhymes with tons of delay pedals. either way I don’t care though, because it’s just pop music. So everyone relax. Most bands suck.
Mr. Relax
I agree with you. I just want to point out one thing…
Jazz, classical, folk, rock, pop, techno and all that good stuff have different niches. Also music need not be compelx to be good. Simplicity is where amazingness lies, but few people can pull it off right. I might even say this is true in Jazz as I prefer the sound of a combo to a full band. I think as far as a pop band goes Vampire Weekend is pretty good.
bwahaha, patrik completely pwned every vw-loving newbs here. and that “just enjoy it for what it is” is fucking bullshit. everyone should just listen to REAL music such as CLIPSE, not this generic and horrible no-talent bullshit. and how come no one on stereogum mentioned the release of CLIPSE’s fresh from the baking oven “We Got It 4 Cheap Vol 3″ it’s up for streaming at the Re-Up Gang records website so everyone who cares about REAL music should take a listen right now.
I think the comment about “Just listen for what it is” is not meant to be “It doesn’t matter-don’t really think about it,” but that when you listen to an album you shouldn’t force your own conceptions of what something should be- you should just take in an album and decide from there how it really effects you. I know all of the stereotype comments that are thrown at this band, but when I sat down to listen to this album all I could think was how intelligently self-aware and warm their music was. These guys are fully aware of where they come from and honestly if anyone has actually paid attention to the lyrics in the awesome “Oxford Comma,” you would see that even don’t buy into their background and higher education. And as for being influenced by Afro-Pop, If I hear one more comment about how they shouldn’t be able to express themselves in the way they want I am going to hurt someone. No one has the right to determine or sit in judgement of how someone has to make any form of art. Now that is fascist. These guys like afro-pop and they want to show support for it. That’s all that needs to be said for it.
“As an actual musician, with a masters degree, I have to say …”
Graphic designers, the stage is yours.
Jim and Greg at Sound Opinions already tore them apart this past week. http://www.soundopinions.org
But what do they know?
1) Not all Ivy-League folk are rich. Some of us are around due to super duper grants. Not enough of us, but some of us.
2) Irrespective of the quality of the music itself, we should be asking ourselves what it means for American college students – and, more dramatically, American college students at an extremely elite(ist) institution – to be playing “African” music. Politics of appropriation, anyone?
3) Probably some people are talking about that. Would that it were more!
don’t get caught with a whack calzone! haha thank you commenters for now I’m getting into L’Homme Run
I do think blogs have much power, and I think I’ll be quoting Dr. Feelgood, and I’m buying this album soon
Maybe they can tour with Dan Deacon
pizza party is HIII larious!!!
http://www.myspace.com/lhommerun
ashy knucks, come get your snotbox rocked
After the the second or third time I listened to the album I thought that it’d be unlikely if I still liked it in a few years. After about the fifteenth time I stopped caring about how long I’d like the album. I accidently kind of started dancing to M79 while riding the streetcar home yesterday. The fact that their music made a thirty year old indie dork dance on the TTC means they fucking won. It doesn’t matter how much reverse-hype they get from blog reading dicks – they made me make an ass of myself so in my eyes they win.
It’s just a really great pop album. Who cares how long it lasts.
its a week or so later nad I dont give a fuck anymore.
Just because people think VW sucks, doesn’t mean they don’t like upbeat music, that they don’t actually “listen to music” rather than check out the full experience and it doesn’t mean they just hate them because the hype.
In my case, I thought the LCD Soundsystem record was awesome, and everyone seems to be shitting themselves over that, but guess what, I don’t care, “Someone Great” is still an incredible song. Regardless of the hype, I embrace it.
VW however will be a success because it’s the same mediocre bullshit that appeals to people that like Jack Johnson. I don’t hate either of them because they play festivals or that they’re on MTV or how they choose to dress, I dislike both because I think their music is boring, derivative, and doesn’t speak to me at all, and that can be ok and doesn’t have to be hipster.
I really hate these guys. What terrible, whiny music this is. They make me cringe! Please go away, disappear or something. It’s like indie John Mayer