Track Review: Vampire Weekend "A-Punk"


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Current New York City darlings Vampire Weekend are indeed worthy of note. Their starched collar, Paul Simon on safari routine is a sip of cool lemonade in the city'''s muggy ''"serious indie''" air. But why does the initial pace of this song make me deathly afraid of a blog-fueled ska revival? Probably because these guys are so smooth. I could see Ezra Koenig'''s Britt Daniel croon and infectious ''"Hey!''" shouting paving the way for a horrific relapse into wallet chains and dangerous elbow dances if this skanking impulse is left unchecked. You know people would fall for it.


Vampire Weekend are too consistently likable for this to be more than a passing concern. A cool organ breeze and a shifting drum beat save the day, prohibiting too much snark from being slung at their New York Times featured, digitally distributed exclusively by Other Music, Columbia University, golden boy asses. So a little snark, but the class warfare anti-Strokes kind that has very little to do with the music itself.

 

6 Responses

June 28, 2007 at 2:49 p.m.

these guys seem to be all over the blogosphere of late. haven't checked them out til now. totally ska-ish sound. not sure how i feel about that.

June 28, 2007 at 2:56 p.m.

Their other light faux Afro-pop songs are much better, but also much more ubiquitous. I justed wanted to stop anyone from thinking that now's the time to form a ska band. Now is NOT the time to form a ska band...

June 28, 2007 at 3:11 p.m.

haha. that's funny. i have that feeling that ska is coming back though....:(

June 28, 2007 at 4:37 p.m.

What's wrong with ska?

June 29, 2007 at 9:55 a.m.

their other tracks on myspace are not so ska. let's get one thing straight: there's no reason to bring Paul Simon into this conversation. this band's pace is much more upbeat and if simon was trying to break the scene nowadays with his underdog mentality, he'd probably not be rocking the same grooves as vampire weekend. i mean it took, what, two decades and who-knows-how-many safaris before paul simon decided to start writing songs that weren't about being sad, wheras this band seems like they're actually have fun right now despite being one of about three thousand unsigned bands in the area... or are they signed? any news from the blogosphere about an album?

June 29, 2007 at 9:57 a.m.

wait, correction, their other myspace tracks are ska, but so what?

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