Posts tagged as Vampire Weekend
When's The Last Time You Talked About Vampire Weekend?
Man, remember when Vampire Weekend's Contra was, like, a big deal? It seems so long ago!
Here Is The Cover Art For Diamond's New Mixtape
Diamond is an Atlanta rapper who came to fame six years ago as a part of Crime Mob, a group of high school kids who signed to Lil John's label, BME Records. (So you know they were crunk, because Lil John, he always tells the truth.) They made a couple good records with Lil Scrappy, who will always have a place in my heart because of his song "No Problem," which is one of the most crunk songs I know, a great favorite of mine. Diamond, who is now Lil Scrappy's girlfriend (and, unfortunately, suffering some recession-related problems with him), has left Crime Mob and started a solo career. Her new mixtape is called Cocaine Waitress. The music, from what I've heard, is less remarkable than that title—and the cover, which pretty much speaks for itself, I think. Here it is large-scale, to better appreciate the details. READ MORE
Free Energy and Titus Andronicus, "I'm Going Down" (And Bruce Springsteen Covers Throughout History)
Philly's Free Energy and Jersey's Titus Andronicus just finished a tour together. At one of the last shows, last week in Atlanta, the Titus guys joined Free Energy for a beery, raucous rendition of "I'm Goin' Down," a song from Bruce Springsteen's 1984 album, Born in the U.S.A. It's pretty great. READ MORE
Vampire Weekend, "Giving Up the Gun"
In case you haven't seen it yet, here is the new Vampire Weekend video. It's pretty great for lots of reasons: RZA as Shaolin ninja/chair umpire, Jake Gyllenhaal as drunk, Lil Jon speaking French, the racially symbolic all-white set. Also, people playing tennis in motorcycle helmets and singer Ezra Koenig looking a lot like Michael Cera.
No, I Didn't Mean That At All! This Is Why I Don't Care About Your Band
Last weekend, I didn't watch the Super Bowl either. But it was neither political nor an aesthetic preference for the alternate programming made available by the NFL's hydra-like presence and counter-presence in our broader culture. I had just come off the crippling debilitation of an internet-fast brought on by some malware thing, and I really just plum forgot! Reveling in the ability to stream things off the Internet, trolling YouTube, burning Camels with Teddy Pendergrass, I was bathing in the life that had felt so neglected lo those many (couple of) days. READ MORE
Zachary Woolfe: Another Long Vampire Weekend
It's easy to know that a band is good, and harder to know what they'll mean for people. In 2006, I knew, as did a bunch of Columbia students and some folks on the Internet, that Vampire Weekend was good. I knew this only because I happened, at the time, to be dating a friend of two of the band's members. In this capacity I would go to their shows, one of those relationship tasks that would have been pretty annoying if the band didn't put on really good shows. READ MORE
New Video: Vampire Weekend, "California English"
Here's video of Vampire Weekend playing a new song called "California English." I really liked the part in the recent New Yorker article when singer Ezra Koenig said that "There are probably a lot better reasons why you could say we're not good" (as opposed to questioning the authenticity of three preppy white boys and one preppy Iranian-American playing Afropop). This song sounds, and looks, awfully hard to play. It is a fast song. In fact, drummer Chris Tomson has a bit of difficulty-and laughs at himself in a nice way.
Against "The Historical Pullback" and "The Problem"
One thing I very much enjoyed over my Christmas vacation was the New Yorker profile of Vampire Weekend. It was pretty great! It is not online, because why would you put a piece on a band that is wildly popular amongst the youngs up on the Internet? (I KNOW, you have your reasons, New Yorker, I'm sorry, I will shut up.) But here is a "fair use" (??) excerpt of one of the best parts of the piece. In it, the members of Vampire Weekend-who are being followed by, in addition to the New Yorker reporter, a documentary camera crew-go to visit and interview Tom DeLonge from Blink 182, who greets them with his own documentary camera crew. Amazing! This piece is so highly enjoyable, from beginning to end. And yet I will complain that it suffers a bit from between .75 to 1.25 of the two big afflictions of magazine essaying. READ MORE
