Contra takes it NXTLVL
Jan. 22nd, 2010 07:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusHey, there's this band called Vampire Weekend, and they're actually pretty good! Oh, you knew about them already? I see, I see. Yes, I'm always a bit late picking up on these things. Now I think about it, I was vaguely aware that Contra, their new album, isn't their first release. There was a bit of excitement a couple of years ago around their debut, wasn't there? In fact, it even reached Click Opera, didn't it? It's all coming back to me now. Rostam from Vampire Weekend sent me their first album, and I wrote a piece entitled Fan mail to the future.
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Now, that particular month (February 2008) you weren't allowed to be lukewarm about Vampire Weekend -- you were either supposed to love them or hate them with a passion. So my response to their debut album got relayed by various music publications to an astounded, incensed world as Momus to Vampire Weekend: Bugger Off!.
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In fact, I was far from saying "bugger off!" What I actually said was much more muted and tentative: "I haven't really had my Vampire Weekend moment yet. They've sent me their album, and I've listened to it, and I can hear the basic appeal -- the directness, the economy of means, the well-written lyrics, the happy feel. I get a weird sense that there are possibilities in this music ("Wow, pop can do this!"), and yet the possibilities are all in the past. Taken a bit further, this bit could become Talking Heads, this bit could become The Beat, this bit The Police, and this bit Prefab Sprout... Perhaps Vampire Weekend will work with a producer who gives them enough experimental edge to make my penny drop."
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After reading this, Rostam wrote me back: "Perhaps in a weird way I expected as much, but in fact it's inspiring because it means things aren't nxtlvl enough on our end..." Unlike the music press, he got exactly what I meant. Pop music has to keep taking things to the next level. Otherwise it begins to die.
My own "next level" with Vampire Weekend was meeting vocalist / lyricist Ezra Koenig in New York on May 18th, 2009. Ezra chose a vegetarian Indian restaurant called Saravana Bhavan, where we each dipped a big dosa into a delicious array of little sauce dishes. Ezra told me he was thinking of calling the next Vampire Weekend album "Contra" and asked what my immediate associations with the word were. I said: Oliver North (Iran-Contra), The Clash (Sandinista!), Hegel (the Hegelian dialectic of thesis and antithesis, which would mean their third album would have to be Synthesis) and the idea of the internet troll or contrarian. The following week several Vampire Weekends got the table of honour at the three-hour Momuthon concert I played at the Highline Ballroom.
And now Contra is out. I don't have a copy yet, but the tracks I've heard on YouTube -- the ones splashed across this page -- bode very well indeed. I think my favourite is the most experimental. This is called California English:
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And this is California English Part 2:
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The "disorienting autotune" effect reminds me of an early version of my song Zanzibar, A Canterbury Tale, but VW have a more zingy chorus and better production. In fact, it's the production on this album that excites me most. There's an excellent use of space, an avoidance of rock sludge, some wonderfully crunchy percussion rolls which nevertheless drop away to leave some good space when they're finished, and a nice early 80s synth bass sound which reminds me of The Passage:
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There are still, of course, reference points and influences. From Afropop, from Paul Simon, from The Police, from Two Tone ska, from Elvis Costello circa Armed Forces, from Talking Heads. But my fuzzy feeling this time is much warmer, and not just because of Ezra's charm offensive. This sounds to me like a band taking old things and making them new, making them brashly fresh. It's rather like seeing the way Japanese culture takes things from the West and recompiles them just askew enough to make them fresh, appealingly strange, and unmistakably Japanese.
To my ears, from what I've heard so far, Contra is more original and innovative than the first release, without losing the infectious, accessible pop edge. Vampire Weekend did indeed take things NXTLVL.
[Error: unknown template video]
Now, that particular month (February 2008) you weren't allowed to be lukewarm about Vampire Weekend -- you were either supposed to love them or hate them with a passion. So my response to their debut album got relayed by various music publications to an astounded, incensed world as Momus to Vampire Weekend: Bugger Off!.
[Error: unknown template video]
In fact, I was far from saying "bugger off!" What I actually said was much more muted and tentative: "I haven't really had my Vampire Weekend moment yet. They've sent me their album, and I've listened to it, and I can hear the basic appeal -- the directness, the economy of means, the well-written lyrics, the happy feel. I get a weird sense that there are possibilities in this music ("Wow, pop can do this!"), and yet the possibilities are all in the past. Taken a bit further, this bit could become Talking Heads, this bit could become The Beat, this bit The Police, and this bit Prefab Sprout... Perhaps Vampire Weekend will work with a producer who gives them enough experimental edge to make my penny drop."
[Error: unknown template video]
After reading this, Rostam wrote me back: "Perhaps in a weird way I expected as much, but in fact it's inspiring because it means things aren't nxtlvl enough on our end..." Unlike the music press, he got exactly what I meant. Pop music has to keep taking things to the next level. Otherwise it begins to die.
My own "next level" with Vampire Weekend was meeting vocalist / lyricist Ezra Koenig in New York on May 18th, 2009. Ezra chose a vegetarian Indian restaurant called Saravana Bhavan, where we each dipped a big dosa into a delicious array of little sauce dishes. Ezra told me he was thinking of calling the next Vampire Weekend album "Contra" and asked what my immediate associations with the word were. I said: Oliver North (Iran-Contra), The Clash (Sandinista!), Hegel (the Hegelian dialectic of thesis and antithesis, which would mean their third album would have to be Synthesis) and the idea of the internet troll or contrarian. The following week several Vampire Weekends got the table of honour at the three-hour Momuthon concert I played at the Highline Ballroom.And now Contra is out. I don't have a copy yet, but the tracks I've heard on YouTube -- the ones splashed across this page -- bode very well indeed. I think my favourite is the most experimental. This is called California English:
[Error: unknown template video]
And this is California English Part 2:
[Error: unknown template video]
The "disorienting autotune" effect reminds me of an early version of my song Zanzibar, A Canterbury Tale, but VW have a more zingy chorus and better production. In fact, it's the production on this album that excites me most. There's an excellent use of space, an avoidance of rock sludge, some wonderfully crunchy percussion rolls which nevertheless drop away to leave some good space when they're finished, and a nice early 80s synth bass sound which reminds me of The Passage:
[Error: unknown template video]
There are still, of course, reference points and influences. From Afropop, from Paul Simon, from The Police, from Two Tone ska, from Elvis Costello circa Armed Forces, from Talking Heads. But my fuzzy feeling this time is much warmer, and not just because of Ezra's charm offensive. This sounds to me like a band taking old things and making them new, making them brashly fresh. It's rather like seeing the way Japanese culture takes things from the West and recompiles them just askew enough to make them fresh, appealingly strange, and unmistakably Japanese.
To my ears, from what I've heard so far, Contra is more original and innovative than the first release, without losing the infectious, accessible pop edge. Vampire Weekend did indeed take things NXTLVL.
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-22 06:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-22 07:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-22 12:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-22 08:01 pm (UTC)Sayaka is my girlfriend. She designs clothes and I bake cakes for her. I write about it later, we cry together, and repeat. It's a lovely arrangement. And she likes your music. I have written a lot about her on my lj lately. I only have one photo of us, but we have taken many together.
Not to whack you with the big stick of sentimentality, but, being back in Berlin, are you missing Tokyo?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-23 02:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-22 08:41 am (UTC)-what they need is some ornette (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1ijdr_ornette-coleman-1974_music) in the mix.
- on second listen I can hear some two tone (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnBQyRmOTHs&feature=related) in there, but does it improve in any way over the original. No, it does not. Rude boy smash.
- on third listen, wow, I must say, this is a band that really runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.
- on fourth listen the banal lyrics have become somewhat sick making. this is music to make ads by. Men in a boardroom at Nike sitting around a table tapping their feet. Oh jesus no momus. What happened to Frank Tiger?
- on the fifth listen I put a gun up to my head and pulled the trigger.
- and linking a Passage track on the same page is just cruel.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-22 08:46 am (UTC)vampire
Date: 2010-01-22 09:57 am (UTC)Gilles
Re: vampire
Date: 2010-01-22 10:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-22 10:10 am (UTC)Also, have you heard "Matias Aguayo - Ay Ay Ay"? I only recently did so, but right away it made me think of 'matsuri-kei'...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj17bGvUQmM
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-22 12:23 pm (UTC)Glad you liked A Canterbury Tale!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-22 06:43 pm (UTC)Maybe you should try and bring together a matsuri-kei compilation with a primer in the liner notes.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-22 09:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-22 10:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-22 02:05 pm (UTC)drownedinshite
Date: 2010-01-22 08:02 pm (UTC)Sounds Cool...
Date: 2010-01-22 04:36 pm (UTC)I mean, a song with slowed-down donkey braying, elephant trumpeting, and military drum-rolls (and add a little 1812 overture booming samples and some revolutionary bull-horn chants) may sound different, be innovative, and say something political (in the U.S… and really now, what’s more sophisticated that than political intrigue in foreign locals)… but will it keep your toes tapping, and keep you singing along? (OK that may be a dumb “experimental” song concept… but it was much easier to come up with off the top of my head than an even slightly slamming tune would be).
With that in mind, I found the latest Vampire Weekend more immediately listenable than the first… and it has drawn me to multiple listens, again, more than the first. I think they are learning, and improving.
But then again, I thought Interpoly Paul Bank’s “Julian Plenti” album last year rocked authentically hard… and I doubt many here have similar taste.
I may be a “bone-head,” but am I the only artist here who sees making it “look cool” or “sound good” as the hardest part?
Re: Sounds Cool...
Date: 2010-01-22 07:15 pm (UTC)Re: Sounds Cool...
Date: 2010-01-22 07:47 pm (UTC)….but to dispel any ambiguity – A CT scan proof of my “bonehead”:
http://brainprobe.jdcasten.info
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-22 06:00 pm (UTC)I never quite understand why you insist on undermining bands based on how much they sound like their influences. I get your point about a general lack of innovation in the "musical grammar", as you called it, and I completely agree that Vampire Weekend would sound a lot better with a Rusty Santos or even a Dave Fridmann to produce them, but I feel like too much is lost in this almost-rockist posture that "they don't make them like they used to".
Perhaps you would be less disappointed with the state of music if you didn't look back so much and compare. A lot of the most interesting music these days is indeed a synthesis of influences from different musical eras, but also most of the innovation comes from the different ways in which these influences/elements are recontextualized and updated, and in that sense I don't think these times are very different from any other period.
the boy with the perpetual nervousness
Date: 2010-01-22 06:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-22 07:21 pm (UTC)knowing who made the music
Date: 2010-01-22 08:07 pm (UTC)do any of your friends make shite music?
Re: knowing who made the music
Date: 2010-01-22 08:56 pm (UTC)clairvoyance, much???!!
Date: 2010-01-22 08:06 pm (UTC)This is my first time visiting your blog.This must be a good sign!!! :)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-22 08:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-23 09:57 am (UTC)...like all the mentions they make of clothing items that are worn by college students as a way to burrow into their fans' hearts. "I wear that! They understand me and the dowdy, cozy, tryingsohardtomakeitworkcan'tfuckitup1iota side of my priviledged life!" Hate.
om tat sat
Date: 2010-01-22 08:24 pm (UTC)Re: om tat sat
Date: 2010-01-23 01:02 am (UTC)Re: om tat sat
Date: 2010-01-23 05:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-22 08:49 pm (UTC)I do like 'A Canterbury Tale', thanks for posting it.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-22 10:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-22 09:59 pm (UTC)And..WHAT THE FUCK?!??!?! Is it just me or is everyone forgetting that animal colective have been making music (more edgier in fact) like this for the past 5 years?? Its actually starting to become a standard in indie music, i dont think we should encourage a band that goes out and smoothens (castrates) an original and guttural, visceral aproach to music making.
These bands, like Vamp Weekend (more like Weakend) are so boring, filled with "nice fellows", They insult me by not insulting me or everyone else!
Love Animal Collective too...
Date: 2010-01-22 11:32 pm (UTC)Spivak to the future
Date: 2010-01-22 11:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-23 01:56 am (UTC)The only person bucking the trend seems to be John Maus:
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-23 05:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-23 07:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-23 08:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-23 08:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-23 09:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-23 07:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-23 07:33 am (UTC)In other words, I'm actually with you, because the men in tuxes whose agenda is to get panties thrown at them are my kind of guys. Martin Fry FTW.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-23 07:36 am (UTC)Naoshima Hatecrush Slideshow
Date: 2010-01-23 02:32 am (UTC)"like seeing the way Japanese culture takes things from the West and recompiles them just askew enough to make them fresh, appealingly strange, and unmistakably Japanese."
http://www.youtube.com/user/masawo#p/u/78/o3RhDrHM3TA
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-23 03:47 pm (UTC)-J F
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-25 02:05 am (UTC)