Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

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And now Vampire Weekend: a quartet who met while studying at Columbia University. Naming themselves after an amateur film made by their singer/distinctly unshowy guitarist Ezra Koenig, they cut an almost painfully preppy dash, and crucially never decided to downplay who they were and where they were coming from: instead, they decided to have some fun with it. The rhythm section of bassist Chris Baio and drummer Chris Tomson sounded infused ...
..._quite_ as fully formed as Vampire Weekend: usually there's the interesting period where the band obviously don't really know what they're doing (when they do their best stuff) before professionalism and experience (and only having enough ideas for one album) grind the life out of them. The record really _sounds_ great, but not in a this-week's-fashion way: Koenig's guitar is clean and thin, just like David Byrne's was in early Talking Heads, the ... more

Apparently, the greatest possible crime within the realms of popular music is 'being a bit clever'. Isn't this a bit odd?

I mean, surely there are many far greater potential transgressions? 'Giving James Blunt a career' for instance, or perhaps 'putting Ben Elton in a position where he could claim he'd written a hit West End musical'? Or, on an entirely different scale, 'never mind allowing Simon Cowell to become rich to an unimaginable degree, letting the ghastly wedgie-as-a-fashion-statement git continue living was too charitable by half'? But no, heaven forbid that you dare to display a bit of education or deep thought.

'For one who has not lived even a single lifetime, you are a wise man...'

For rock and pop have always had a sizeable self-interested crowd wishing to portray them as the working man's music, and as such only allowed to be earthy, dirty, simplistic and dumb. Such an outlook manages the considerable trick of both alienating the thinking classes (whoever they are) and insulting that same working man, implying his incarnation of the human condition surfs a never-ending wave of Neanderthal relationships, lager and terrible English. Upon such foundations have Oasis built an entire career, and such was the way with Britpop that most of the clever protagonists had to pretend to be thick to gain a market foothold. Looking further back, the witty and literate (and occasionally pretentious, I'll admit) such as Steely Dan, Scritti Politti and Prefab Sprout were doomed to cultdom no matter how accessible they lowered themselves to sounding.

(Of course you can go too far the other way, and overemphasise how educated you are. Everyone giggled (a rarity, given the artist concerned) when Lou Reed tried to musically adapt Poe's 'The Raven', but at least it sounded like Laughing Lou was being sincere: there are always been bands who fervently want to SOUND like they're clever even when they aren't. Just because I'm hurting doesn't mean I'm hurt. Yes it does Chris...that's what 'hurting' means. And that's without lighting the touchpaper labelled 'Alanis' and 'Ironic').

But if you're American, there's always been a way of legitimising being in a band and having still been in full-time education past the age of 18. Move to New York...it worked for the Velvet Underground, Talking Heads, Television and their ilk.

And now Vampire Weekend: a quartet who met while studying at Columbia University. Naming themselves after an amateur film made by their singer/distinctly unshowy guitarist Ezra Koenig, they cut an almost painfully preppy dash, and crucially never decided to downplay who they were and where they were coming from: instead, they decided to have some fun with it. The rhythm section of bassist Chris Baio and drummer Chris Tomson sounded infused with the spirit of the 80s World music explosion (or at least with the spirit of the Western artists who nicked the sound), and second songwriter, producer and keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij carefully dolloped a baroque sauce (flute, harpsichord, chamberlin) of sonics over the top. This, obviously, had the potential to be the most ungodly mess. And yet...

Having put together a very highly regarded demo CD-R the band gradually recorded their debut album while holding down full-time jobs: this is the kind of sensible careerist approach one would expect from Ivy League graduates, rather than the insertion of multiple eggs into single baskets tactic favoured by most acts. Having buffed those basic tracks to a satisfactory sheen (and becoming the first band ever to be photographed for the front of Spin Magazine before their debut album had even come out), they were probably pleasantly surprised to discover a sizeable audience ready to give their self-dubbed 'Upper West Side Soweto' sound a chance.

'I never drink...wine. Other than Château Margaux'

1. Mansard Roof - There's an old quote of indeterminate origin...'Writing about music is like dancing about architecture'. This was first said by Elvis Costello. Or Frank Zappa. Or Miles Davis. Or Immanuel Kant. Or Steve Martin. Or someone else. Whatever. Regardless, this song gives me the chance to do one while the listener can do the other, what with a mansard roof being a two-tiered arrangement designed to maximise a house's attic space (what with the band coming from the sorts of families whose houses have attics, and basements, and boathouses). Starting with an entirely representative keyboard flute sound and chamber strings, soon we're on a profoundly catchy clopping cavalry charge towards the decimated Argentine navy that star in the rest of the verse. One realises very quickly that it's sensible not to look TOO hard for literal meaning in the lyrics: sometimes one should just enjoy the sound of the words without the fretful worry that songs should be about, y'know, STUFF (and before any Oasis fans start using it, that logic doesn't work for Noel Gallagher, because his words manage to be both clunky AND meaningless).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlgNFwoApec

2. Oxford Comma - A tick-tock rhythm sounding for all the world like an advancing army of slightly limping toy soldiers beckons us into a charmingly profane ditty which may or may not be about grammatical fascism (although Koenig has said it 'is more about not giving a f*** than about Oxford commas'). This is the band's biggest UK hit single to date, and is probably the track most likely to hook the tyro: the flute keyboard (all single notes) is perfect texturally, and the guitar solo in the middle manages to be both utterly studied (and completely guileless) at the same time. Clean, concise, and excellent (did you see what I did there?). Beautifully done 'single shot' promo video too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_i1xk07o4g&feature=channel

3. A-Punk - Quite the most frantic and calculatingly 'catchy' track on the album, with a deeply jangly guitar lick and breathlessly declaimed vocals propelling the verse towards a breakdown of even more flute keyboard and some thumping drum rolls: the classic 'loud quiet loud' trick. Despite this it's still one of the less memorable tracks, being a bit too excited to allow its hooks to properly sink in. Which isn't to say it isn't a good song: the riotously free-associative lyrics ('turquoise harmonicas', anyone? They should have mentioned John Lydon though: he used to be 'a punk' after all. Y'know, before those butter ads) and lovely bridge see to that. But the record's more durable pleasures lie elsewhere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XC2mqcMMGQ&feature=channel

4. Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa - ...which might be more appropriately titled 'You Can Call Me Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa On The Soles Of Their Shoes', given the level of larceny being committed towards 'Graceland'-era Paul Simon (which, given the level of larceny he committed towards previous explorers of African music, seems entirely fair). Wisely, the song embraces its cultural theft, and the riot of guitar/bongo (percussion rather than straight rock drumming on this track: it's a very percussive record) call-and-response and bouncy underpinning bassline is welded to a lyric depicting the influence of the native cultures on the WASP lifestyle. Cracking stuff, and no mistake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wHl9qRsMzw&feature=channel

5. M79 - Sledgehammer baroque of the sort you could imagine being written by the bratty younger brother of Michael Nyman if he were the sort of lad who professed to hate his older sibling while secretly wanting desperately to impress him. It's hugely entertaining and almost classically catchy, as slight variations on the same little motif are hammered out by both harpsichord and chamber strings (even if it does, as the bloke in the Guardian pointed out, sound a lot like the theme to 'Ski Sunday'). It's actually about a Manhattan bus route (even though there are galaxies and grenade launchers called M79: I had to look the latter up, in case you were worried) but still finds time for a lovely middle-eight of soaring strings and a sensible exhortation to 'charm your way across the Khyber Pass'. Well, it was good enough for the Carry On team.

6. Campus - Having spent five songs semi-flaunting their education, finally the band place us in the world of professors, student digs and feigned indifference. Almost everyone who's ever been through higher learning will empathise with the eternal struggle of getting up in the morning, the half-awake slouch across campus, and the nobly doomed attempt to ignore the fellow-student that you still really like but who gave you the cold shoulder. It's a track that doesn't have to rely on its lyric to tell the tale, as the briskly walked verse is brought to a shudderingly emphasised halt by a chorus dealing with
the moment the singer clocks the object of his affections. How am I supposed to pretend I never want to see you again?

7. Bryn - Starting off like the unholy union of a Viennese waltz and a Flatley-esque Irish jig (why oh why did his 'Feet of Flames' show never actually deliver what its title literally promised? Hand me the turps and the lighter), this soon retreats to be one of the lower-key offerings on the record. This isn't a bad thing: this is what stops 'proper' albums sounding like Greatest Hits compilations. Aside from the guitar/string motif mentioned, this is a very midtempo organ and drum song of longing, either literal (for a person) or metaphorical (for a time or place but calling it 'Bryn'). Or neither.

8. One (Blake's Got A New Face) - Unfortunately this song doesn't relate the tale of Amy Winehouse's ghastly husband getting so badly beaten up in jail that he needs revolutionary cosmetic surgery (nor indeed is it a reference to his IQ), but it does signal the album gathering itself for a sprint finish: from hereon in all the tracks are excellent. A quartet of juddering, descending guitar licks leads into a cracking song with both a call-and-response chorus (one of few VW songs that lend themselves to an obvious crowd singalong) and call-and-response percussion/keyboards (of a fashion). Kudos too for the casual use of the word 'collegiate' at the denouement: to think that Noel Gallagher once claimed that calling a song 'Acquiesce' constituted erudition and eclecticism. The sound of an affluent summer in New England, one suspects.

9. I Stand Corrected - Starting almost hymnally (which should be a word, even if it isn't) before warming up to a gorgeous lament, this dispenses with the guitar completely. Instead the drums get the most tender thumping possible, the strings get all reverent, and the keyboards burble away in a
somnambulant three-in-the-morning fashion. Koenig's plaintive croon suggests a protagonist begging for forgiveness, until a proper scanning of the lyrics suggests he's actually deploying the classic male tactic of apologising in a manner so submissive as to be sarcastic.

You've been checking on my facts
And I admit I have been lax
In double-screening what I say...

No one cares when you are wrong. Point-scoring disguised as penitence. Dammit that most women can see through it, eh?

10. Walcott - The band's enormously addictive traditional set-closer is a proper piano-pounding foot-stomper coming with the ultimate seal of approval: it's currently my mobile ringtone. Welded to some huge, ballroom-in-the-Overlook-Hotel-in-'The Shining' drums, the band drive a horse and carriage right through the middle of the Cape Cod social scene, complete with foul-mouthed insults that manage to be both gleeful and restrained at the same time. Exactly how tongue-in-cheek it is only becomes apparent with a bit of research: Hyannisport is a ghetto apparently, despite there being squillions of opulent yachts in the harbour and four generations of the Kennedy family having lived there. Probably best not to accept any lifts home from parties there without checking the lineage of the driver, then.

11. The Kids Don't Stand A Chance - The album ends with a languid corker of a song, mostly Koenig's vocal backed by tribal drums and bass, but with some wonderfully incongruous counterpointing baroque keyboard and guitar: basically, it's the album in microcosm. The percussion sounds vast again, like it was recorded in the Houston Astrodome by Animal from 'The Muppet Show' on downers, Ezra Koenig gradually achieves the most lovely childlike falsetto, and the track climaxes in the most perfectly judged of instrumental fade-outs.

And so, after 34 minutes we all feel cleverer and more metropolitan than when we started. Smashing.

'One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach...'

It's rare for an act to arrive quite as fully formed as Vampire Weekend: usually there's the interesting period where the band obviously don't really know what they're doing (when they do their best stuff) before professionalism and experience (and only having enough ideas for one album) grind the life out of them. The record really sounds great, but not in a this-week's-fashion way: Koenig's guitar is clean and thin, just like David Byrne's was in early Talking Heads, the keyboards are fun and daft, and the drums are often incredible. It's complex but never cluttered, so you can properly hear everything (a rarity these days), and you get a definite sense of the spaces in which the music was recorded.

Thought has obviously gone into it, but it's not been over-thought to the point of sterility, and it plays its smartness straight while playing its smart-arsedness for laughs. It's short, it's concise, and, crucially, it never ever forgets to be 'pop'.

Highly recommended. Now watch them go and bugger up the second...sorry, 'sophomore' album. Here's hoping they don't go all Holden Caulfield on us if they do.

(Available for less than a fiver on Amazon). 

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