vampire weekend - only god was above us, out april 5, 2024

"mvotc is full of piano lines you can sing, they're as strong as the vocal melodies imo"

this is true of some songs on Contra as well. Taxi Cab comes to mind.

xps I like "Hannah Hunt" quite a bit too. FWIW, whenever I play Vampire Weekend, it's a 16-cut mix drawn from their first three albums, and placed right after "Run," "Hannah Hunt" makes a bigger impression.

The new one's not bad, but I'm still much more partial to their records with Rostam Batmanglij. They're still a singles band to me, and at least going by what's listed here as 'singles,' with the exception of "Horchata," the other 14 from those first three albums are pretty much the ones I go back to, along with "Obvious Bicycle" and "Hannah Hunt."

(Should clarify, the ones where Rostam was a full-fledged band member.)

It's hard not to miss Rostam. Even when you can tell they're still reaching for the same kinds of cultural/sonic juxtapositions (the stiff, properly enunciated choir next to the swing/R&B loop on "Mary Boone," for example), it still doesn't touch the innovation of something like "Diplomat's Son," which still sounds so novel and challenging and effortless and *pleasurable* to me.

Curious - do any of you go back to Father of the Bride?

Just put it on last night as a result of this thread. (the post above where I said I wanted to hear "Harmony Hall" — I did!)

Still enjoyed it. I like singles from the three before it but as I'm sure I've said on other VW threads, I just don't like their rhythm section. It's a hangup for me, the songs feel stifled. I get that for a lot of people those albums work, but they feel claustrophobic and clipped to me. Singles are fine but too many songs in a row and it just feels kinda airless? I think that's a big reason I like the expansiveness and/or sloppiness of FotB.

My revelation on VW in a way came via “Warm Heart of Africa” — I had concluded I didn’t really like the band, but I loved that song and I was like, OK, I like Koenig with a good beat.

i probably rate all of their albums about equally. some aspects i like more about some vs others but it never really cohered into a stable strict ranking. fotb has the most bad songs, but it's also the longest, which should be factored in imo. they're a special band

fotb has the most bad songs, but it's also the longest

duds on fotb: "sympathy", "sunflower", "we belong together"

duds on mvotc: "unbelievers", "everlasting arms", "finger back", "ya hey", "hudson"

unbelievers is a banger, you are tripping

that list of MVotC "duds" is bonko! lol

i'll give you "hudson" but the first 2 are standouts and "finger back" has grown on me.

FotB duds: "married in a gold rush," "my mistake," "sympathy," "we belong together" - that 3 song stretch from "married..." to "sympathy" is the nadir of the record for me.

I love Married in a Goldrush, it's funny and has a great chorus. I'll give you Sympathy, but We Belong Together is a good time. I like all of the Danielle Haim songs.

duds on mvotc: "unbelievers", "everlasting arms", "finger back", "ya hey", "hudson"

are you fucking kidding me

would claim at least three of those as my favorite vampire weekend song

"Ya Hey" IS their best song imo

Midway through my first listen my reaction is that it’d be cool to hear Spoon do a full album cover of these songs

I'll never get past the roboticized squeak in "Ya Hey."

it's a decent lyric but the vocal effect is ridiculous, it's awfully plodding and the bass isn't enough to carry the song either. i have trouble understanding how anyone thinks it's one of their best

happily surprised to see j-zone in the credits for a couple of songs here

never really fucked with them until a few years ago, when I spent an afternoon with the VW essentials equivalent on quobuz, but the indie rock channel via Sirius is playing nothing but the band's shit, the new record and songs they like, this morning it was Genesis "I Can't Dance" and Sean Paul "Like Glue"…

1. He may resemble Paul Simon in multifarious ways (has he acknowledged that he's into Simon?) but vocally he resembles Bob Dorough, uncannily so.

2. A motif that seems to pop up all over his works is this rapidly picked, ascending/descending guitar line…it suggests to me that he cares about fancy guitar playing and aspires to play really really well, way beyond what post indie rock guys typiucally wish to achieve…

3. There's this new song "Capricorn," he talks about recording it in an interview segment and wanting it to be heavy, but a new, original kind of heavy, in between Sabbath and shoegaze shit: and yet, it seems to me that incumbent on "heavy" is to be dark, mean, doomy, and this guy and his band are not capable of projecting that quality, and indeed the resulting recording is not recognizable as heavy.

1. Yep.

They must have used some of his drum loops, presumably? (J-Zone)

thought so, though he's been a session drummer for a while so possibly playing live? credited as drums for capricorn and hope

Sampled, he has a few posts about it on his site:
https://jaymumfordmusic.com/

hope everyone can come together and agree people giving j-zone money is a good thing

Also anything that gives Vampire Weekend better beats.

you're talking about the band that made "bryn" and "cousins"?

duds on mvotc: "unbelievers", "everlasting arms", "finger back", "ya hey", "hudson"

are you fucking kidding me

― ivy., Thursday, April 4, 2024 10:55 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Indefensible

you're talking about the band that made "bryn" and "cousins"?

yes, good examples of their clatter-over-groove rhythmic approach. which on a first listen I hear too much of on the new one too.

Having LOTS OF THINGS HAPPENING FAST on the drums does not equal "good beats."

Hm. I never thought of business as a VW trait/weakness.

“bryn” is pretty rhythmically weird, with the clave and the african-inspired behind the beat groove.

cousins does have lots of things happening fast, but in a good way imo

If you're looking for a traditional rhythm section, "This Life" from the last album is tight.

if you want clatter-over-groove it's there on mvotc but "bryn" and "cousins" have great drums

"Bambina" is the best song from FOTB no one's mentioned. "2021," too. Both under 2 min. The way he plays with tempo and time is really alluring to me.

what i have learned from this flurry of thread activity is that some people love Vampire Weekend and some people do not like Vampire Weekend.

I do like VW but I kind of feel that I can't really be surprised by any new VW song any more. They seem to have settled into their musical identity, which is fine. They have a pleasant and recognizable sound. But for me to really get excited about a new VW song I think it would have to have something extra, like an attention-grabbing lyric or something. I listened to the FOTB singles a few times, and then kind of forgot about the album. I feel like the same pattern may repeat this time.

like an attention-grabbing lyric or something

Like starting your album with "Fuck the world"?

first listen...

stereogum distortion/"noise" discussion p relevant; this album gets chaotic noisy in really short bursts. from shoegaze to free jazz, it seems pretty intentional. "play it fucking loud" or whatever.

lol "connect" rips off dido/"stan"

the budget just seems to get bigger + bigger, the music follows. this was their second longest break between albums. hrmph. i can say right now, i like it way more than father. feels like an intentional move to create such "BIG" sounding music. it very much has a "classic" sound in the way it was recorded. those orchestrations on something like "the surfer" simultaneously recall fleet foxes + frank sinatra. maybe he's taken the 'pop music is the classical music of today' philosophy to heart + these are his attempts. idk, def sounds like vw... just a bizarro world variant where fela kuti + brian wilson are frequent collaborators. shaun ryder likes to hang out sometimes too.
i'll leave lyric deep diving to more dedicated folks. he's got something on his mind, that's for sure. i'm just enamoured with the sound of it all. for now i'll just say it's really good + i like it a lot.

Ok I like the Surfer. Sounds like trip hop mixed with 60’s psychedelic pop. Good for you VW. Well done.

Pravda also a highlight

These dudes record more insouciant music than the analyses suggest and their lyrics portend; they make imaginary pop music that they think in an ideal world will get played alongside Jack Harlow.

that ambition on full display on the new record.

(shrug) i like the idea of music "saving the world" or whatever.

Btw I didn't like any of the singles much, but everything works much better as an album without too much weight on any one song. Ariel Reichstadt really cooked on this.

(also considering that this is supposed to be a "band" record, it's funny that all the best drum parts are sampled from someone else)

what i have learned from this flurry of thread activity is that some people love Vampire Weekend and some people do not like Vampire Weekend.

and that some people have incredibly wrong opinions about what constitutes a Vampire Weekend banger.

I'm on team "Unbelievers" is an immense banger, fwiw.

one half-attentive listen in, and I liked it a lot. going to play it more over the weekend

I like this album fine but a lot of it feels like loading up on sonic fuckery to obscure that they write the same melody over and over. I wouldn’t say “Gen-X Cops” is the best song but at least the riff has a slightly sour element instead of their standard mid tempo swooning.

I think that nails it, all the big choruses feel very similar melodically and in terms of the chord movement? Theory posse please chime in.

I also heard part of their takeover of XMU on satellite radio. I think I'm going to like this one a lot more than the last one. still love the first three.