Headline says it. Yesterday you saw photo and blurb that introduced this far-flung pop cultural consortium, today it materializes. What does it say about this band that somehow this lineup of Friends Of Vampire Weekend not only doesn’t surprise but seems entirely logical to me? Like of course RZA, a JoBro, Lil Jon, and Donnie Darko are gonna get down with Contra. Because at this point who isn’t? Can’t stay mad at an album that drops and repeats so effortlessly, save those critics with overly prickly sensitivities for the embedded semiotics of race and class issues in pop music. Anyway this video is super fun: You may recognize the main lady here from the “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” video (her name IRL is Jenny, because of course her name in IRL is Jenny), you’ll definitely recognize most of the rest of the faces from their being famous. Tennis is the game, RZA’s the line judge, Gyllenhaal is funny, this is all sort of great. Here’s what Ezra had to say about pulling it together.
Via Spinner:
We always thought RZA would be perfect. We’d been in touch with Lil Jon since the first album. He heard the reference on ‘Oxford Comma’ and sent us some cases of Crunk Juice. Joe Jonas and Jake Gyllenhaal were both excellent — lot of improvisation and some surprisingly powerful serves.
Dudes make fun videos. Contra is an album, it’s out, and it’s quite good.
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Even better than I expected.
also, i’m glad that joe jonas is in this video. the jonas brothers are actually legit, and they transcend a lot of the other shit on the radio these days
hopefully this gives the jobros streetcred
sincerely,
someone who has been mistaken by girls as nick jonas
Agree on the transcendence & the streetcred. Joe DEF deserves it, IMO. (I suppose Nick does, but he is boring & obvz has a much more commercial goalset than Joe, who really seems to be in it for the funsies.)
Love the video – glorious work, ever’body!
this is probably my least favorite song on contra, but they did well with this video, i like it a lot. i’d like to see white sky next, though!
I hate Cousins. I hope they make a video for Run.
I agree, I feel like White Sky should be the next song to get a video. Either that or Run. Both great songs. I never liked Vampire Weekend’s first album, but i actually grew to like Contra.
white sky is a great song, run shoul be i single i believe too, but Holiday is way more material to be a single than this song, is great though
I liked it too, but if you notice at the end RZA plays “Holiday” through his ghetto blaster, so maybe that’s the next single?
I’d also like to see White Sky next, or California English.
nba jam tennis
JOEBROS
The main chick kind of ruins it. Not particularly interesting and looks to have never even seen a racquet before. She kind of pulls a sofia coppola in godfather 3. Cause otherwise its very enjoyable.
It’s like Blur’s clip for The Universal meets The Squid & The Whale meets that ping pong movie with Christopher Walken…but, you know, way more RZA – quite enjoyable!
Get ready for VW to get even bigger. Having a Jonas in your video is the equivalent of being in a Twilight movie.
wow more garbage from overrated blog band, they should really go back to their day jobs.
…which, considering their formal education, would probably be better than 99% of most musicians’ day jobs.
Serious Q.: has this site abandoned features, just to serve hype-cycle?
Specifically, “Premature Evaluation” RIP as consequence of this function?
(lest anyone state how uneven and contrived Winter of Mixed Drinks is, save “Skip the Youth” — contradicting earlier overcompensation-hype of the utterly pedestrian lead videos/tracks.
Third-rate Death Cab meets…A Weekend in the City? “Sunday” & “On” as templates, especially; ugh.)
Worse than I’d thought, after hard-drive review, since the last entry (Spoon).
In addition to FrRab, I’d expected to see /timely/ PrEval of recent releases by any of these artists:
Ruby Suns, Shout Out Louds, Besnard Lakes, Local Natives, L.Champion, Midlake, Los Campesinos!, Owen Pallett, Shearwater, Hot Chip.
for second-favorite feature, after Progress Report — another lamentable loss!
(alas, to be dropped from main Nav in mid-year redesign, once this becomes full-fledged Tweet-stream aggregation of other sites videos/songs?)
addendum (formatting-error):
” < / elegy for second favorite feature >“
Whoa. Relax, technoG. There will be a Progress Report up later today.
Lil’ Jon, he always tells the truth
Fuck all your Vampire Weekend hate. This video is number one.
The chorus melody is virtually the same as Shy Child’s “Summer.” Not that that song was terribly original or inspired either, but at least it had some energy– this song is just sort of long and…blah. Sorry to be grumpy, but the accolades this band gets don’t always seem deserved.
It almost seems like you are being preemptively defensive, as if Vampy Weekend has become a guilty pleasure since:
1) Going straight to number 1 on Billboard
2) Having music videos with tween Disney purity ringed Disney pop stars
3) Jake Gyllenhaal
4) Listening to (brace yourselves) pop music
I think we have to face the facts and acknowledge that Vampire Weekend is pop music. Regardless on how you want to describe indie rock these days, Vampy Weekend is not that. Maybe that’s where the preemptive defensiveness comes from, but who cares Stereogum this isn’t a indie rock music blog, right?
Um…except for the fact that VW is on an independent record label, which last time I checked is what makes someone indie. If you want to question the “rock” label go ahead, but they are at the very least “indie pop.”
all you tennis fans out there notice ezra’s resemblance to Roger Federer? Seriously uncanny
I totally noticed that! lol
thank god someone besides me noticed, its almost unsettling
After the 4m line, the girl gets the “eye of the Ginger” and you just knew she’d nail that!
officer yates: where’d he go?
RZA: (grumbled voice) I’m over here now.
haha fun fun fun. love the little holiday bit at the end. and i respect joe. he’s turning into a little hipster too. no wonder he’s a vampire weekend fan.
I guess everyone who comments on here is 6 years old since there is an inexplicable amount of respect for a guy in a boy band.
Jake Gyllenhaal’s thighs greatly impress me. The song however, not so much.
just when you think nobody follows stereogum, there’s a radiohead or vampy weekend post and suddenly there’s 30-60 comments. post everyday bros, and upvote, downvote. let’s see some personalities. let’s make stereogum half as interesting as videogum. you know music news is way more interesting than mtv soaps and youtube videos
Please don’t say “vampy weekend”
Such a great video! and on to Gyllenhaal’s beefed up-ness from the prince of persia movie.
what a legend.
I love fun videos.
And Jake’s pasty thighs.
This band is terrible. This song is terrible.
Anybody else catch the Matthew Barney vibes? I hope Ezra Klein spends the entirety of the next video with a bloody rabbit carcass in his mouth.
Nope. No Matthew Barney vibes… at all.
RZA couldn’t be ridiculous if he tried.
it seems like it should work, but somehow it doesn’t.
great song, cool video. however, for a band that seems pissed off at the prevailing idea that they are a bunch of wealthy and priviliged ivy leaguers, they made an odd choice for a sport to play in this video. i love the band, but dont get their strategy here
wow!
most. creative. thing. ever.
best band EVER. most creative video EVER!
what’s so refreshing about this video is how you can tell that RZA is in it cause he’s just such a fun loving guy. just so playful. people, you KNOW this has nothing to do with celebrities attaching themselves to something that’ll probably help their exposure.
they’re not like that. they just love this Paul Simon inspired music for our generation.
go vampire weekend. go jonas brothers. go other people in this i don’t know.
a flaming tennis ball, 3 SIMULTANEOUS tennis player chicks at the end to represent that she’s REALLY good… BRILLIANT! genius work, people. GENIUS!
Haha, I hope my sarcasm detector is accurate right now. If so, I’m glad someone felt the same way about this video as me. So much hype for such a self-serving, bland, poorly constructed video. Meanwhile the Liars’ beautiful video for “Scissor” is largely ignored.
This song is so bad on so many different levels…. I hope I dont ever have to have a conversation with anyone above me….
Its not that I cant like bands like them because I do like some of their other stuff, but this… is.. a fucking single?.>…. are you kidding me??? I wish some fat ass at their record label would have turned this slop down so they could either a)play the we kept our integrity and sound card and gone w/ another label or b)realize that they made a piece of shit. At least that way I would have had a 50% chance of them realizing what they’ve done. I would be embarrassed to have written this song, or anything else on contra. I dont get it… when you guys hear this album does it paint this picture in your head that your right along side bono fixing africa??? i’m pretty sure the big feel good choir in horchata was ripped off from any scene in Ernest Goes to Africa where they pan out to show the wild life ernest meets on his zany trip.
I can understand liking their other stuff…. but wtf are any of you actually listening to it now.
It’s safe to say the mainstream/indie line is getting pretty blurry at this point right?
I personally hated Contra, i fell in love with the old vampire weekend. Like Oxford Comma, A punk, etc. Before this CD was released I heard Cousins and Horchata. When i heard these two tracks i was thinking wow this is gonna be a stellar album, cant wait till it releases. When it releases i go on itunes and demo a couple of the songs and all i have to say is that they changed sooo much. They got super electric and way too synthy for Old school Vampire weekend. They’re trying this Passion pit/ miike snow sound but it doesnt work for them! Lets hope this was a temporary thing….. Seriously ??? you throw in Joe Jonas in there. Your an indie band your suppose to be kept under the radar. “Have you heard of the band that put joe jonas in one of their videos?” says the preppy middle school girls who stole our Owl City from us. All in all i still like vampire weekend, i just lost a lot of respect for them. I think there Semi mainstream!
There is no Indie/MNSTRM ‘line’ good music is good music. Yes, some music that is under an Indie AKA INDEPENDENT label that is very good does not always get popular, but for the most part GOOD music goes MNSTRM and if you h8 it because of that then UR a FUCKING LSR. Stop ragging on good Indie bands because they go MNSTRM. EVERY1 should hear Vampy Weekend. They’re very good. Contra is a spectacular album. I hope the best for them.
Your a little mainstream prick, go listen to your snow patrol and killers. i guess im a “FUCKING LSR” because i hate anything “MNSTRM” see ya later ass hole.
P.S. do you like feel badass spelling like MSTRKRFT?
Not Vampire Weekend’s best work on the video. great song but I don’t see what they are trying to accomplish with having joe jonas and other random people in the video. it doesn’t seem like vampire weekend i fell for.
I’m disapointed but hopefully their next video will be as good as cape cod kwassa kwassa, mansard roof, or oxford comma.
What is this? Everybody is here! hahaha well I really hope that Daft Punk is there!
Lovin Vampire weekends new album, and what could be better than doin a music video with the RZA. Another amazing album is Broken Bells. That new song Vaporize is the hottness.
http://www.youtube.com/brokenbells
why is there a jonas brother in there? that kinda worries me.