Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend
This is a perfect (or very nearly so) pop album. With unbelievably catchy melodies, the perfection of that slightly distorted sound all the kids are trying to get right these days, world music influences, and songs that move naturally from one awesome riff to the next, methodically building to a jumping-up-and-down-in-ecstasy climax, this is the album that The Beatles would make in 2008.
At least half of these 11 songs feature melodies that are so damned catchy you can’t believe nobody’s written them yet. Hearing new songs like that is probably the best musical experience you can have at age 33, because it reaffirms the power of music and how much untapped potential is still out there. I’m sure I’ll listen to twelve mediocre albums in a row at some point in the future and lose all faith in humankind’s ability to write a hook again, but for now the possibilities are endless and I can’t even see the horizon.
Wikipedia says the band is influenced by African popular music, and that’s there in the drums, but it doesn’t get in the way of perfectly accessible Western pop songs. I also hear some Jamaican reggae and Latino influences, too. It’s all so easy, though, with absolutely no pretension. So even if world music scares you, you’ll be able to dig on this, and you get the burnishing of your world music cred for free. And remember, it’s basically a modern The Beatles, so what’s to be afraid of?
Vampire Weekend wouldn’t really be a band attending Columbia if there weren’t some pretension, though, and they chose to insert it in the lyrics. Words and phrases like Dharamsala, Madras, Jackson Crowther, kefir, and keffiyah (sic), dowdy, and rickshaw appear every other verse. They fit, though. They’re not forced in there, and you almost get the feeling that they really do talk like this. Who knows, maybe I’m just swept up in the dreamy pop tunes.
“The Kids Don’t Stand A Chance” ends the album and, while okay, is entirely unnecessary, and weakens the album to a notch below perfect. Update: Screw it, this is a five lunchbox CD. Criticizing this album for its last track is like criticizing Scarlett Johansson for her original nose. Sure, it’s not what, taken alone, is traditionally regarded as what it should look/sound like, but it makes it even more appealing that there’s some humanity amid the outrageous perfection. Johansson’s a perfect ten and this is a perfect five. </Update> “Walcott” is the best song ever, but on a weaker album “Oxford Comma,” “Campus,” and “I Stand Corrected” all could have won the same title. So start with those, but for the love of God start now.
Rating:
Mixers: “Oxford Comma,” “A-Punk,” “Campus,” “I Stand Corrected,” “Walcott”
Keepers: everything else
Filed Between: Steve Vai (Passion And Warfare) and Van Halen (1984)
Tags: 2008, 5 lunchboxes, Best Song Ever, CD reviews, corrections/updates, music, My Baby's listening section, new favorite album
July 16th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
wow. I would have never guessed. what the Beatles would do today?
I’ll have to go listen again.
July 17th, 2008 at 6:46 am
[...] in their lyrics. Both of these CDs have been reviewed here this month. The first is Vampire Weekend (“Mansard Roof,” the first track), and now I encounter the word on Billy Joel’s “That’s [...]