Popcraft

(This is a response to Michael’s post “A Vampire Weekend In An Ikea Coffin”)

All across the nation, possibly dozens of friendships are undergoing the ultimate stress test; A band that some people like and other people don’t like has released an album, and now we all need to fight about it.

Michael and I are two such “friends,” and Vampire Weekend is the terrible band that is driving a stake between us with their awful music that I hate. We’ve been having this same fight since 2008; I make a joke about the band looking like assholes who I want to beat up, then he makes the reasonable statement that I should judge them on their artistic merits and not their pastel color scheme, and I say “Oxford Comma” sucked and we just let it drop and eat dinner in silence (over the internet).

We don’t argue about other bands like this. Other bands usually provide some glaring mistake for us to rag on, a focal point for our disdain. Everything I hate about Vampire Weekend only exists in my peripheral vision, vanishing when I try to point to it directly. But it’s there. But I can’t find it. Where is it?

Michael has said that 99% of my hatred for Vampire Weekend comes from my own assumptions about their attitudes, and that is true. But that is also valid. 99% of why we hate any musician comes from assumptions about their attitudes, and it’s debatable as to whose fault that is. This is why people hate Morrissey, Prince, U2 and the Guns n’ Roses cover band playing at the bar this weekend. They are all doing something so on purpose that if we don’t get it we become furious. They seem in on a joke that they are only telling other people. It makes us call their sincerity into question, which is the fastest way to lose your footing when trying to argue about bands. In this way, I will confess that Vampire Weekend are brilliant: my problems with them are too slippery to hold on to, and I’m left empty handed while they sit there with a “who me?” smugness that just makes me hate them more, because I’m imagining it in my head.

After loathing their self-titled debut, I wanted to give Contra an honest shot. I listened to “Cousins” and thought it was legitimately great; The song contains all of the energy, ideas and worldbeat influence that everyone keeps talking about. I was on the verge of “getting it,” but the album didn’t live up to the single. It began underwhelming, and by the time I got to “California English” it had me outright livid. Pointless autotune (as opposed to “properly used autotune?”), recycled hooks and uninspired instrumentation covered up by needlessly big drums had me gritting by teeth too hard to come down during the admittedly stronger second side.

If you ask Vampire Weekend fans to tell you why the band is great, they will often (always) point out the glaring Paul Simon influence in their songs. This has sort of become Vampire Weekend’s big pitch, that they are the band that is going to make Paul Simon cool for the kids again. I listened to Contra with this in mind, and I think it only made things worse. Yes, Vampire Weekend can hock a derivative Paul Simon line with the ease of selecting a font in Microsoft Word, but beyond that they are just another indie pop band without any interesting ideas. There isn’t enough variety between their melodies, and the music supporting it sounds flimsy when you give it your attention. Just like everything I hate about the band disappears when I try to pin it down, their positives seem to disappear when I’m looking for them as well. Contra requires that Paul Simon-colored lens to keep up the illusion.

It’s almost disappointing that Vampire Weekend are not the villains I wanted to make them out as, instead turning out to be a sort-of-boring pop band that likes Paul Simon a lot. At least I have less reason to be angry with them now. Hopefully my online conversations with Michael will not be so heated for a while, at least until there’s a new horrible Panda Bear album.