If there's anything these upper crust New York kids have seemed to have learn comes from listening to African music, in today's bland overhyped popular music scene it's the difference between "Home Grown Talent" & "Corporate Marketing Hype" music: Vampire Weekend's debut album announces straight off that it's home grown. The first sound on the first song, "Mansard Roof", comes from Rostam Batmanglij's keyboard, set to a perky, almost piping tone-- the kind of sunny sound you'd hear in old west-African pop. Same goes for Ezra Koenig's guitar, which never takes up too much space; it's that clean, natural tone you'd get on a record from Senegal or South Africa. Chris Baio's bass pulses and slides and steps with light feet, & most of all there's Chris Tomson, who plays like a percussionist as often as he does a rock drummer, tapping out rhythms & counter-accents on a couple of drums in the back of the room.
And yet they play it all like indie kids on a college lawn, because they're not hung up on Africa per say -- a lot of these songs work more on a primal fun level, if you think back to when babies makes sounds to know they exist & or to self entertain. It all leaves behind nothing more than clean-cut pop & preppy new wave, tucked-in dress shirts, polo collars popped & English-lit courses long dropped but read on the side. Sounds good to me.Visit Label Site HERE.
over hype!
ReplyDeleteOver hype? Maybe? But I think this band does what it sets out to do, set a fun tone that spans African/Caribbean rhythms with pop rock & preppy chic. I think they do it well to boot.
ReplyDeleteSo they may have been overhyped by their marketing teams but that's what is expected from the scenario of today's business models in entertainment. So in the end do they aspire to be the biggest band in the world? I don't think so. But I do think they wanted to make a fun record and again in that they have succeed Anonymous.
With so many good bands out today Ariel cmon with this. Anonymous is right. Over hyped . Did you even listen to the cd I gave you. There is a lot of good music coming out but you cant go to target and buy it, or you dont see them in any mtv shows. Do your ears a favor and listen to the cd.
ReplyDeleteLou are you kidding? I don't listen to the radio or even buy music from any major retail chain unless the cd I'm interested in and in question is or are on sale... Which is really doubtful a lot of the time as I rarely ever buy cds from the mainstream at all and what I listen to for the most part are not main stream music in general and so must be bought from the artists' site(s). An example, do either of you listen to Sera Cahoone? I doubt it.
ReplyDeleteSo my taste in music is too varied to sit here and debate. I go from Ryan Adams, Camera Obscura, Bright Eyes, VHS or Beta, The Black Keys, Death Cab for Cutie, Liz Janes, New Order, The Arcade Fire, M. Ward, The Incredible Moses Leroy down to Coconut Records and old classics like The Beatles and or Pink Floyd in a wink of an eye. Regardless my tastes are to all over the place to debate. I comment about what I know or what has grabbed my attention for the better at any given moment. I mostly do Film updates, but I dabble in sharing music and even literature here and there.
So in the end, I know Vampire Weekend has been and is overhyped but that doesn't take away from what they bring.
Also start truly worrying on here to me when I praise to high hell a Miley Cyrus album. At that point I will either have lost it or music has fallen considerably. Granted those Jonas Brother are pretty talent pop kids.