Short attention span reviews: 2008, 24 days in
All hail 2008! For some reason or another.
Magnetic Fields, "Too Drunk To Dream"
Holiday meets 69 Love Songs. Clever genius meets even greater genius. If there was any justice in the world (there isn't), we would all be singing the intro to this song in every bar we went into: "Sober, life is a prison. Shitfaced, it is a blessing."
Vampire Weekend, "M79"
The Walkmen meets Afro beat. Not as good as that description and yet so much better than it. How does one band be so wonderfully catchy and so fucking irritating at the exact same time? The second half of this song was in my head all day, and I loved/hated every second it was in there.
School of Language, "Keep Your Water"
One of the three guys from Field Music. Appropriately, it's about 1/3 as good as Field Music. Which is still pretty damn good.
Cat Power, "Metal Heart"
This album kind of goes by in a pleasant, melancholy blur. It may sharpen and clarify with repeated listenings, but...probably not. Pleasant enough, though.
7 comments:
I'm curious as to what you find irritating about Vampire Weekend? The fact that they are so in debt to apparently obvious influences? The fact that they are the next overly hyped band from Brooklyn? The goofy non-sensey lyrics? (ie, "Feels so unnatural, Peter Gabriel too"...sure dood, whatever!) The fact that they are named "Vampire Weekend"? I'm wondering. I can see a case for all three...but none of the above really bothers me personally. I guess I'm not really steeped in Afrobeat enough to find it annoying (I only have and have heard one Fela Kuti record).
Don't get me wrong: I think it's a really fun record and certainly gets stuck in my head. All indications are that I'll soon love it. It's like a predictable romantic comedy.
And it irritates me in ways that aren't really irritating, if that makes sense. I pick at it, but it never quite bleeds. Translation: nothing there to keep me from listening and enjoying.
But here's the list anyway:
1. It irks me to have them complain about the madras-wearing richies who annoy them. You could form a drunken drinking game around their mentions of Cape Cod. The Walkmen are the same way. It's just hard to feel too connected to lyrics that don't really seem to say anything but, "This asshole really annoys me."
2. Their drummer is terrible.
3. The Afro beat, while giving it an interesting sound, feels mostly just like padding on the top. Take away the South African-via-Talking Heads guitars and some forced beats and you have a great indie rock record that bears no real relation to Afro beat at all.
So that's it in a nutshell. I think that history shows that I almost always go back on statements like this.
Am I mistaken or did you once also say that you thought the drumming on the National's records is terrible? It's funny because I've since discovered those albums and part of what really appeals to me is the drumming! Some of those songs are transformed simply because the drummer opted to play a less than obvious beat. I don't want to put words in your mouth...maybe it's the manner in which he plays that bothered you, not so much what he chose to play?
Anyways...I find it interesting that you say the VW drummer is terrible! Once again, a large part of what appeals to me on this record is in fact the drumming! Reid, how can this be? We are supposed to be drum-buddies! ;)
Ok.. the thing about the VW drummer is that he sounds like someone who is almost accidentally "good" at drums. (Perhaps I see some of myself in this in that I never considered myself to be technically proficient at all.) Yeah, I hear there are moments where he is in and out of time but it almost adds to the character of the songs. I hear him hitting different parts of the snare drum left and right (the kind of thing that our old producer would -- now regretably -- "fix" in Pro Tools so as to make things sound as less human as possible. I dunno...I just really appreciate a creative/resourceful approach to the drums. You know, don't let the fact that you can't physically do something ever get in the way of actually doing it. From that standpoint, I find it inspiring!
Oh...and as for the lyrics thing. They're a bunch of NYU graduates. I just assumed that they *were* the Cape Cod richies. Same with the Walkman; do bands get any preppier than those guys?! I just assumed it was more "write what you know" than anything else! ;)
Ooops...scratch out NYU and substitute Columbia. Even better! See? They're Ivy Leaguers, for chrissakes! After thinking about this some more, the song suddenly makes more sense to me. The Peter Gabriel reference is almost like some sort of guilty-as-charged admission: yeah, we're a bunch of privileged white boys who were introduced to world music via old Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon records. ha!
It's less the richie thing and more the "this asshole" thing. It just seems like a waste of songwriting to only be able to write about guys who bug you; sort of like, "that's the issue in your life?"
It's not so much the drumming parts that bother me at all. VW's drummer plays like Jens Lekman sings: it's not really terrible, but he's trying to do way more than he's capable of. I suppose I admire the ambition in a way, and it obviously doesn't keep the music from being a favorite, but...well, let's say that it's not that it bothers me as much as I'm constantly conscious of it.
As an aside, the National's drummer bothers me because of his near-total lack of dynamics. I like the parts, but it's like he can only hit the drums at one single velocity. To continue the drummer/singer analogy: he drums like Mates of State used to sing. And again, doesn't keep me from loving it.
Now that you mention it about that lyric...that makes it sound a lot better! At least they're not trying to cover up where they're from: they're reveling in it. That's pretty admirable in a way.
This is a pretty fun two-person thread we've got going here...
Sorry for posting this so late but I'm just now catching up on the past two months' worth of blogs. I heard VW's Oxford Comma on the radio a few weeks back and loved it. Catchy with witty lyrics. And not really about punctuation at all.
Haven't heard their other stuff yet with the Cape Cod references...but given my Nantucket connection, that actually makes them more interesting to me.
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