Put yer Fangs Away

The hot buzz this week was Tuesday’s release by Vampire Weekend, entitled Vampire Weekend. This band has been getting serious buzz for the past 8 months or so, and it seems like this has been beneficial for them, as their tour opener was a sold out show at the Bowery Ballroom. Not an easy feat to sell out Bowery, let alone the 1st show of your first tour in support of your first album.
Now, being the responsible journalist that I am, I will weigh in my opinion on Vampire Weekend, based on my limited knowledge of the situation. For starters, I do not have the album. I have heard most of the songs in one capacity or another, and in that sense, I have to authority to make rash generalizations about this band. This is the angle I’m going for with the rest of my writings here at Shut Up and Dance.

First hearing the songs, I immediately thought Paul Simon’s Graceland sound, and then I watched some on their stuff on La Blogotheque (www.blogotheque.net) and they definitely have some post-punk influences. They’re not bad musicians, not in any sense, and live, they might even rock, but for me, the deal breaker is the lyrics. I mean they are SO pretentious, c’mon. These romanticized notions of industrial England or turn of the century New England is just absurd. What? You we’re English majors? Well GREAT. Guess what, I found most of the English majors at my college pretentious and obnoxious, what makes you think you're gonna be different? Hmm? The bottom line to me is that these guys play “Ear candy.” (NB -I came up with this term last night, and hope to expand on this soon.)

Talented? Yes. But there’s a huge leap artists must make to go from talented to, you know, the next level. I see their careers like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Debut album is the critics’ darling, tour the world for a year or too, plays major festivals (they already made Coachella), and then the second album comes out and everyone is disappointed. And they are disappointed because it wasn’t as good as the first. When in actuality, it is exactly the SAME as the first album, but because of the hype and the praise the first album received, they can’t live up to it. These guys have one sound, one style, which is fine, but I don’t see them deviating from the Afro-post-punk-pop equation they got going for them, so they’ll have that niche market covered. Unique? Check. Mind blowing. Not now, maybe with time; they are young.

Check ‘em out at Popscene tonight, for free no less, but keep in mind I won’t be going. Frankly, I was more excited to discover that a new season of Real World/ Road Rules Challenge, this time in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, has started. This year it is The Guantlet III: Rookies vs. Veterans. If this season isn’t the most extreme, gut-wrenching display of humanity, then I don’t know how civilization can be saved.

I will consider checking them (Vampire Weekend) out next time they swing through town March 22 and 23, as they will be hitting up the Independent and Rickshaw Stop.



Bonus Material-

The Complete Cast listing of ALL the Real World/Road Rules Challenges http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_World_Road_Rules_Challenge

-Also-

I clicked next blog on the top of the page here and was brought to this. http://tonythebaker.blogspot.com/
I’m glad to know I’m in good company.