Description
2015 reissue, 12″ LP, XL.
You want ideas? Vampire Weekend have ideas. They’ve also got wit, imagination, an eye for lyrical detail and an ear for musical adventure. Most importantly Vampire Weekend have tunes. Oh yes, they’ve got tunes. Dealing in genres the band have dubbed ‘Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa’ and ‘Upper West Side Soweto’, ‘Vampire Weekend’ is a breath of fresh air, both musically and lyrically, with this New York band endeavouring to make music that is anything but straight ahead rock. Straight ahead? As if. This is indie-rock that isn’t indie-rock, a joyously exuberant carnival of melody and rhythm. Strings. Organs. Afro-funk guitars. Courtly 18th century harpsichord. A bit of post-punk (maybe Franz Ferdinand crossed with the Bhundu Boys?). Lyrics about grammar and architecture and preferred bus routes and the British Imperial origins of American preppie fashion. With fleet-footed pizzazz Vampire Weekend deploy all these to craft a tinglingly refreshing sound. Anyone for brainy party music? Take ‘Oxford Comma’, a spartan funk charmer that references a piece of grammar (you can look it up). Then there’s the band’s debut, limited edition UK single, ‘Mansard Roof’. Said roof is an architectural style that offers extra living space in an attic. The lyrics then go on:
‘the Argentines collapse in defeat, the admiralty surveys the remnants of the fleet’. You want world music? That is, music of the world? You want Vampire Weekend. You can throw yourself around the moshpit to ‘Campus’. You can imagine what happened to characters in recent single ‘A-Punk’ before they ended up in the song (‘Johanna drove slowly across the city/the Hudson River all filled with snow/she spied the ring on his honour’s finger/oh-oh-oh’). You can shed a tear, then shed your clothes, at the hymnal-meets-tribal thunder of ‘I Stand Corrected’ or the epic ‘M79’, which is named after a Manhattan bus route and forms the heart of the album. – Juno
