"THE REAL CHRISTMAS"

is vampire weekend's contra, which you can stream on myspace....
HOLY
SHIT
HOLY
SHIT
HOLYYYYYYYY
SHITTTTTT.

someday i'll review this for real, but today is not the day. my favorite as of now is diplomat's son, which is the most left-field ridiculous insane beautiful thing i've heard in so long. best start to the decade i could ever imagine.

http://www.myspace.com/vampireweekend

WHITE SKY

you can listen to the song that has defined my life since i first heard it on vampire weekend's myspace.

i would like to also point out that today, december 17 2009, is my two year anniversary with this band. two years ago today i downloaded cape cod kwassa kwassa and that radiohead cover whilst sitting at my dad's computer doing work for my job. this is the best present i could imagine on our anniversary, thanks guys

ME & MY YOU & YOUR

edited out of the review i am writing on this for PMA:
I read Andre Breton’s Soluble Fish today and I was struck by this one line: “The ground beneath my feet is nothing but an enormous unfolded newspaper” and my heart and my head and everything in me read, after the word “is:” HOT GARBAGE AND CONCRETE AND NOW THE TOPS OF BUILDINGS I CAN SEE THEM, TOO. So maybe what I am getting at here is that I am not impartial and perhaps somewhat of a terrible liberal arts student, inserting song lyrics into world-renowned surrealist works. Throughout everything the point remains that I like a band called Vampire Weekend and I like them a lot because perhaps with some strange telepathy they are capable of making songs that sound like what I want music to sound like. Luis asked me to be objective with the misguided faith that objectivity was possible for me, but I have never been able to make sense of my love for this band. I cannot explain it to people when they laugh at the round and complex number of times that I have seen them play live (eight as of now, probably ten by February). But I will try to make sense of how much I love Cousins, which is the first single from their second album, which is called Contra.

you can read the finished review on pma when it's done, i'll link you. for now:

COUSINS --- VAMPIRE WEEKEND (LISTEN ON PMA)

you can now read my completed review there as well.

MORE VAMPIRE WEEKEND JAMS OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND EMBRACE THE FACT THAT NO ONE READS THIS BLOG AND I CAN JUST TALK ABOUT VAMPIRE WEEKEND

CALIFORNIA ENGLISH

i am unsure if that is autotune, bad sound quality, or if ezra is singing in ewe (a language spoken in ghana. i can sing some songs in ewe. just putting it out there). rolling stone described this once as a "frenzied punk scramble" --- i guess, but throw in some ska flavor and autotune. these boys just fuck with genres like nobody's business.

HOLIDAY

if you are feeling all "WHAT DA FUCK" after calif. english i'm sure holiday will make you feel better. pretty classic with that perfect quick energy. when i saw them play this live i didn't realize how brilliant it was - i saw them do it acoustic, and electric that pickup out of the break sounds much better.

HORCHATA

okay i think i can do this now.

HORCHATA --- VAMPIRE WEEKEND

ezra kills on this, by which i mean his voice sounds like stabbing me in the heart. that part with "ohhhh you had it but ohhh no you lost it!" let's just NOT TALK ABOUT IT. i love the breaks with the drumming and the "ohhhhh!" it kind of throws back to m79. they make great use of the marimba (almost as great as paul simon's "can't run but," except considerably less sexy than that song --- face it, "can't run but" is HOT. i wish i could find an mp3 because that song is sexier than hell, entirely without intending to be). the only sexy thing about horchata is ezra's voice, which just does that naturally. "the lips and teeth that asked how my day went..." DIDN'T I SAY I WASN'T GOING TO TALK ABOUT IT?

horchata goes in a different direction - the first thing i thought was "this is weird" - but when you listen to it, it is very natural. the electronics are a bit like white sky and a bit like discovery, there are some lovely strings on it, it's got those sweet pining regretful lyrics that i adore. the way it builds at the end (from 2:20) is just fantastic, adding pieces and pieces and pieces and then backing it all off.


i almost like it better live, HERE, IN TORONTO. fantastic how they do the marimba line on the guitar.

I THINK YOU ARE A CONTRA

CONTRA is vampire weekend's second album, january 12 2010. i just spent the last ten minutes fanning myself with my hands and figuring out how i will drive to new york for the release show.

tracklist:

01 Horchata
02 White Sky
03 Holiday
04 California English
05 Taxi Cab
06 Run
07 Cousins
08 Giving Up the Gun
09 Diplomat's Son
10 I Think Ur a Contra

i wish it was more than ten!
if you read this blog / are obsessed with VW, you've heard white sky, run, cousins, and giving up the gun (or at least the original l'homme run version). i'm willing to bet that california english is a renamed little giant. i've heard holiday, too... it's good! I AM SO EXCITED I CANNOT BREATHE A LITTLE.

you can listen to the first little bit of track 10 at VW'S WEBSITE. it sounds like dave longstreth greeting the sunrise. i can't wait to drive to this album.

TO SEE THE DAWN

IS CAPE COD KWASSA KWASSA THE SONG OF THE DECADE?

(i wish i could say WHITE SKY up there but as it hasn't been officially released my hands are tied.)

when some people talk about vampire weekend it is difficult for them to just distill everything and talk about the jams. for some people it is difficult to separate their music from their roots or their inspirations or their alleged "cultural imperialism" (lol); for me personally it is sometimes difficult to separate the fact that i love their music from the fact that their frontman LOOKS LIKE THIS. but that is a story for another time.

now i am going to just talk about the jams. the point we have to make here is that no one did what vampire weekend did with cape cod kwassa kwassa. don't get all technical on me about paul simon because he didn't work in the clever lyrics about sex and massachusetts. what this song gets across better than DARE I SAY any other song on the subject (doin' it) is the incredibly accurate AWKWARDNESS. down to the voice crack in "is your bed maaAAAaade?" i remember reading an article on one of my favorite music blogs about c.c.k.k. in december 2007 about how that break section with all the cooing and gentle bass was the love scene of the song, ie. all those awkward questions ("is your sweater ooooOOOon??") worked. how lovely is it to think about it that way? a story and a song in one little package. in its incredible simplicity it is smart and clean and perfect.


what about this, guys? a.o.t.d?

there is no doubt that for me this would rank up high, simply because it changed a lot of things about me as a music listener - what i listen to and what i hear and what i see. and certainly seeing them eight times says something about the ridiculous level of my devotion. this album is solid, to say the least. it always hits me how simple and triumphant mansard roof is.

in terms of hottest hotties of the decade, TAKE A LOOK AT THIS PICTURE and tell me you don't wish you were lying on the floor in some corner flipping through one of their history textbooks waiting for this photoshoot to be done so you could talk about the cultural significance of madras plaid and listen to jay-z.

VAMPIRE WEEKEND'S NEXT ALBUM IS GOING TO BE SICK

don't even tell me to stop blogging about this band because it's never going to happen.

REVEL IN THE GLORY OF THESE FOUR SONGS. ROLL AROUND IN IT FOR A LITTLE WHILE.


RUN


COUSINS


WHITE SKY


LITTLE GIANT

SOMETHING EXCITING

(this picture unabashedly stolen off flickr)

i went to all points damp on friday, and of course i saw vampire weekend, and they played a new song, and it is awesome, but you expected that, right? let me reiterate to you that these boys know what they are doing and they CAN BRING IT REGARDLESS OF INCLEMENT WEATHER. at the end of their set ezra said "at first we thought we were going to die. but now we're just having so much fun." which sums up most of my vampire weekend concert experiences!

EDIT: found a new video, better quality / full length!!
(NEW SONG) --- VAMPIRE WEEKEND via youtube.
my brother thinks this might be his favorite VW song to date. i have to agree, i'm really impressed by it. i love the bass/keyboard and the guitar bit at the end. and of course i love that vocal thing (you'll know what i'm talking about when you hear it). give it a listen!

YOU GUYS ALREADY KNOW MY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS SONG

it's not even worth my time to tell you how i feel about vampire weekend's white sky (i think this is my tenth post about it? the first step is admitting you have a problem) because i am pretty sure some otherworldly force spoke through them and it probably ~came to them in a dream~ because it is too good to have been written by human hands. anyway, i have also already expressed how i don't like the slow version they played on jimmy fallon (luckily the recorded version is the fast one), but it's better to listen to that than an awkward bootleg from glasgow just for the sound quality, so...

WHITE SKY (SLOW VERSION) --- VAMPIRE WEEKEND.
i feel like this should be the soundtrack to some tender momentz with a loved one. whereas THE FAST VERSION you can just dance to like crazy. try putting this on next time you're COURTIN SOMEONE SPECIAL and then see what happens.

if vampire weekend put this song out this year, it will be the song of the year. just sayin'.

GUESS WHAT I DID

i saw vampire weekend again, at columbia this time! it was beautiful out. i got there as they were starting cape cod kwassa kwassa and i walked by this young woman dancing with a little girl, singing to her "would this feel so unnatural to peter gabriel too!?" unfortunately i missed white sky, and they didn't play any new stuff, but it was such a glorious day out and everyone was so happy and ezra dedicated a-punk to asher roth and everything just skittered on the breeze and there was this great echo on the vocals in i stand corrected and all was very, very well.

A QUESTION I HAVE REPEATEDLY ASKED MYSELF

yesterday i bought all points west tickets (and you should buy them too!), which would enable me to see vampire weekend for the sixth time. today i asked my friend simone to send me the link to buy tickets to see vampire weekend at smith college in massachusetts on april 22 (i will be visiting my future alma mater, adjacent mount holyoke college, on this day). this means that, by july 31 2009, i will have seen vampire weekend seven times. vampire weekend has written and performed at some point (by my count) seventeen songs, and if we are to do some terrible math this means i will have seen vampire weekend approximately once for every two songs they have written. this prompted me to demand of myself a question i have heard many, many times in the past year and a half wherein i have spent at least 50% of my music listening time listening to this band:

WHY, WHY, WHY DO I LIKE VAMPIRE WEEKEND SO MUCH?
and its subsequent FOLLOW-UP QUESTION....
WHY, WHY, WHY DO OTHER PEOPLE HATE VAMPIRE WEEKEND SO MUCH?

let's introduce this by saying that, like IT'S THE MONEY SHOT has a "boner for MGMT," i have A BONER FOR VAMPIRE WEEKEND (i understand that i am a girl and this is physically impossible. think about the metaphors here). so let's talk about WHY.

every good argumentative essay starts with a concessions paragraph, so here i will make some concessions as to why people think vampire weekend suck / are not worthy of my repeated support.
1) as i mentioned earlier, they have written 17 songs (the album is 11 songs, plus ladies of cambridge, arrows, white sky, little giant, ottoman, cousins).
2) as they are white and incorporate some ethnic rhythms they are imperialist douchebags


metaphorical cartoon representing vampire weekend's alleged "cultural imperialism"

now in an argumentative essay you're going to want to work in why all the concessions you mentioned in the concessions paragraph are complete and total bullshit, thus proving that your point is right:
to reject concession #1, these seventeen songs are RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME. if you like vampire weekend, you can reminisce with me about what YOUR FIRST VW SONG was (mine was THEIR COVER OF EXIT MUSIC. i like to consider this "THE BEGINNING OF THE END"). hearing vampire weekend for the first time was like the moment i realized that i loved living in new york city --- and then i stopped being afraid of the subway, and i stopped demanding my parents to take cabs everywhere, and i wanted to walk in flip-flops and get my feet dirty, and i wanted to be squeezed on the six train in july with every surface sweaty and everyone very irritable, and that i loved this. i was doing something for my job on the internet when i first listened to vampire weekend, and i remember when the drums came in in exit music i just thought "oh, shit."
what i realized when i first heard cousins a few weeks ago was that vampire weekend make exactly the kind of music i want to hear. not all of their songs hit this nail on the head, but a-punk hits it, ladies of cambridge hits it, the verses in ottoman hit it, what i can understand of cousins hits it, and white sky hits it directly in the center, with mind-blowing accuracy. if you are a tough critic you might be thinking "HOW ABOUT YOU JUST GO AND LISTEN TO GRACELAND AND (obscure african musican)." i can tell you that i understand vampire weekend are derivative because all bands are derivative. it is the fact that they are derivative that i appreciate. they manage to amalgamate all their influences in a way that i find absolutely perfect. you can't hate a band because they are derivative. animal collective is derivative (ZING!).

let's reject concession #2, which is a claim i have seen on many pieces of this glorious thing called the internet: vampire weekend are mostly white east-coast dudes with good educations, and some of their songs are influenced by ethnic rhythms, namely those of africa. thusly, they must be imperialists secretly desiring to rule over third-world tribes a la KIPLING'S "THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING."
the interesting thing here is that, when you hate on a band, most people say things like "they suck. they're gay (believe it or not, this seems to be a verifiable way to dis a band. never mind the fact that a lot of gay musicians are very talented --- looks like your go-to insult just backfired, youtube commenters). they sound like joy division. hipsters like them." with vampire weekend, you get "they suck. they're gay. they sound like paul simon. hipsters like them. they're imperialist, white-supremacist, upper-class warriors."


all haterz should photoshop a giant chandelier in place of cecil rhodes in this famous cartoon. then get back to me.

my point here is that, by appreciating the music of other countries and wanting to incorporate some of its inspiration into original music, you're not going back in time and putting smallpox germs on blankets you're then going to give to unsuspecting tribes so you can steal their gold. the fact that people associate racism and imperialism with appreciating the music of other countries is SO BEYOND RIDICULOUS, I DON'T EVEN WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. i honestly hope that anyone who thinks along these lines is joking and does not actually think along these lines.

this brings up the opportunity for future discussions about AUTHENTICITY, DERIVATION, and HATERS (look out for these! you will see them because they will be novels)

i think i should spend time doing things on this blog besides vehemently defending vampire weekend's honor, like perhaps defending my own dignity. but this (dignity!) is a discussion for another day. i really appreciate writing these giant novels about ridiculous subjects, and i hope on some plane you enjoy reading them.

i need to post a song here.

GIVING UP DA GUN --- L'HOMME RUN.
you may remember my post about how sometimes the only thing that can truly make me happy is joke rap. relating to this post, this is a college rap ensemble which constituted 3/4 of what is now vampire weekend. i think this song is appropriate, dealing somewhat with the subject of imperialistic violence, but i also think that there is a lot of foreshadowing in this song to Da Greatness 2 Come (some strings and stuff and there's a lyric about vampires). enjoy it.

IT IS A GOOD DAY

like i said
it is a good day



youtube, you never fail me. from what i can tell this is really good.
EDIT: six listens more at 7:00AM prove as fact that this is really good. this makes me realize how much i have missed the yelp in my life lately.... and HOLY SHIT DRUMS!

IT'S BEEN SO LONG...

...since i obsessively and speculatively blogged about vampire weekend!



are they playing A NEW SONG on jimmy fallon tomorrow night / thursday morning?

"it should be fun and different. [...] things are happening." --- ezra koenig via MYSPACE BLOG NOTE
i am sure i am reading too much into this and they will probably just play the kids don't stand a chance or something. but would it not be ridiculously awesome if they just busted out white sky (which sounds better and better with every youtube video i watch)? THINK ABOUT THE POSSIBILITIES!!!


EDIT: LOOKS LIKE I WAS RIGHT! pitchfork's tom breihan adds that it's a "really good song." well, obviously!

IT ALL COMES AT ONCE

this pretty picture comes up when you google 'white sky.'
when i talk about white sky though i'm not talking about that interesting national phenomenon that happens a lot out west, i'm talking about THAT VAMPIRE WEEKEND SONG THAT MAKES ME CRY.

since we've already delved into my personal feelings on this, i'm not going to say much, but i will say that i'll always remember when i first heard this song, because i have never ever in all of my life been hit so hard by a song, and i have been hit pretty hard by a great number of songs.

here is a really nice version... they also did that cover of ca plane pour moi again, and mansard roof because it's a classic. you can select whichever video you want, although let me WHOLEHEARTEDLY RECOMMEND white sky to you as it is mind-blowing, life-affirming, and totally fucking awesome.
WHITE SKY --- VAMPIRE WEEKEND

ALBUMS OF DA YEAR

i'm going to do a top three because i was really only blown away by the sheer and undeniable flawlessness of three. but i also would wholeheartedly recommend this year's releases by:
MGMT, FRIENDLY FIRES, THE MORNING BENDERS, GIRL TALK, LYKKE LI, FLEET FOXES, THE TING TINGS, SANTOGOLD, FOALS, and TOKYO POLICE CLUB.



3) YOU + ME --- THE WALKMEN. this album speaks of a place and time and incredible distance, a kind of divided nostalgia. in its ecstatic moments it is ecstatic, quick hand-clapping, this chimey, awkwardly tuned guitar, hamilton leithauser's voice uniformly joyous. on other tracks he is distant, another place and time, regretful. the drums, the bass and guitar, all are hollowed out, as if pulsebeats from the depths of a cave. this man, this voice, this music, have seen a thousand new years, and all of them have turned out to be something separate from whatever was promised. and they are still hopeful, for the kind of closeness this album's title promises and can only deliver in segments that seem like flashbacks.


2) THE RHUMB LINE --- RA RA RIOT. i saw ra ra riot three times in three months this year - july 19, august 19, october 16. the rhumb line is a sheer testament to how powerful and affecting music can be, and seeing it live reinforces this, at least for me. ra ra riot, more than any band i have ever seen live, feel their music like a physical entity, and it effects you like it effects them - watching, in the late-afternoon heat, wes miles in a button-down shirt and cutoff jeans sob "all, all, all your soaking wet dreams, you've spent them, you have gone and dreamt them dry" into a microphone wedged into the neck of his bass player mathieu santos is an image i doubt i will ever forget in all the years that i live. the shock to the rhumb line, though, is how that energy, so rooted in the visual, is carried into the music itself - the unrestrained insanity, personified and multiplied, in ghost under rocks, the glee that is saint peter's day festival (see my favorite songs list), the heavy loss and regret that is winter '05, and that devastating, pulsating organ and drums in too too too fast - that hook, "when i look in your eyes what am i supposed to do!?" you feel it. you will always feel it. you feel it in headphones, at your computer's speakers, you feel it then like you feel it when it is being played right in front of you and these six individuals writhe around, not standing still for a second, a reflection of the divisible entities of their music.


IF THIS IS A SURPRISE TO YOU, YOU DEFINITELY STUMBLED ACROSS THIS BLOG BY ACCIDENT AND DO NOT KNOW ME, BUT MY FAVORITE ALBUM OF THIS YEAR IS OBVIOUSLY

1) VAMPIRE WEEKEND --- VAMPIRE WEEKEND.
"in newport the air proclaims only the sources of money. even as the sun dapples the great lawns and the fountains plash all around, there is something in the air that has nothing to do with pleasure and nothing to do with graceful tradition, a sense not of how prettily money can be spent but of how harshly money is made, an immediate presence of the pits and the rails and the foundries..."
--- joan didion, "the seacoast of despair"
here is an image of an outsider in privilege. here is a precocious kid, handed a hefty sum of financial aid, who moves to cambridge or new haven or, maybe, morningside heights rosy-cheeked, only to find his every motion suddenly soundtracked by harpsichord and ironic afro-beat. this is a world he finds instantly difficult to understand. all he needs to be happy is to take the 79 across the park. the rich girls he hooks up with are more interested in keffiyehs and louis vuitton. his friends - bryn, without whom he is useless and loveless, joanna, who dwells on past relationships and is not mature enough to let go, blake, fake enough to present a different face to everyone - are all awkward people who have no interest in visualizing, imagining, or planning for the outcome of their lives after graudation. like didion in newport he sees not the glory of money, but the depravity with which that money is made. he sees himself sinking into this life, and knows that there is no getting out of it now. he is already lost, but for three minutes and forty-eight seconds he will beg you on his knees, with these strings behind like some kind of ghost, something chasing he cannot escape, to get out of this cape-cod illusion, to not let this take you over, to flee to whatever kind of safety not-new-england can supply. and this is his final stand before we lose him. this album's penultimate moment lies in his admitting, without doubt or denial, that he has fallen into this life where money is spent prettily and earned in secret, and that he has, without struggling, embraced it, become a part of it - "your pillow feels so soft, now." and yet this is triumphant, refined. a peaceful admission. a little death, a little life.
the shock of this album is its amalgamation of so many perfect things into one perfect thing. there is joy in it and sadness. there is privilege in it, yes, but people don't realize that this album's two longest songs are about taking the bus and fleeing cape cod. there is africana in it and ska and an echo of something like elvis costello. i still have the faith in this album i had when watching it performed, live, in stunning entirety, on the day of its release in january. i can only hope that i always have that faith.




i still have to do favorite concerts + stuff i'm excited for next year!

SO LAST NIGHT

vampire weekend take four dec. 6 2008

can you find me and kt?

so we get out last night and it's snowing. just in absolute awe. wow.
i made a great cupcake analogy with kt and our new friends about how much better last night was than wednesday. if wednesday was like eating ONE delicious cupcake, last night was like having that cupcake, and the knowledge that for the rest of your life whenever you wanted a cupcake it would be there, and it would be delicious.
i can't talk much about this but rest assured it totally verified why i love this band so much.

set list.
yes, four from the bottom, that would be a blondie cover, which was introduced as "that song about fucking the police." i laid my heart on the line. oh, my god.

OPEN LETTERS

dear new york,
dance, new york. DANCE. no one in this city dances. a few times last night i wanted to cry.
love, genevieve.

dear everyone going to vampire weekend this saturday dec. 6,
dance. please. dance.
love, genevieve.



to answer your probable question: it was good. no one danced. campus and white sky were both incredible. ezra forgot some of the words to m79 and then remembered the rest while laughing into the microphone. i think both mansard roof and bryn were too slow. but am i complaining because i know what this band is capable of? well, of course i am. i think they deserve a crowd they've had the two previous times i've seen them: all of us, with this dignified obsession, with the desire to communicate through something - screaming, dancing. in january i remember between every song a bunch of slightly intoxicated dudes yelled "ROSTAAAAAM!!!!" weird but memorable. i left that show with my hair dripping down my neck. i just don't think last night was sweaty enough.

vampire weekend, if you bring it on saturday i will bring it right back. new york, if you dance on saturday, i will dance right back. if you don't dance on saturday you don't even want to know what i will do.

IF THE WASTING OF YOUR TIME WASN'T QUITE SO UNFORGIVING

i couldn't edit this to read "omg vampire weekend." were that change made, i would BE this lolcat.

i am seeing vampire weekend for the third time three weeks from tonight. guh. i don't know how i am going to wait three weeks especially considering it will be twice in that week that i will see them and they will probably have some new songs to play and they will probably play ladies of cambridge which is SO GOOD LIVE, SO GOOD. my friends hear about this too much but: june 14 they played it just after m79, throughout which it was raining lightly. ezra played the first chord of ladies of cambridge with rostam and that keyboard just syncopated, perfectly, the bass and the drums, and it started to POUR. it was cathartic. every kind of tense i had ever felt went away. that's when i stopped caring about all my shit getting wet and i remember, kind of, yelling "take! it! take! it!," and me and my brother and simone just went crazy dancing soaking wet, and then with that big long quiet section, and everyone was so silent, and in those little pauses before chris brings it back with the drums all you could hear was the rain and this little feedback fuzz and when ezra took a breath to sing something you took a breath to say nothing, just because you had to breathe and you'd forgotten until he reminded you. and i remember after "but for you i could put it to rest," i didn't think they would finish the song. there was this total stillness, it was haunting and somewhat terrifying given the nature of the song, the almost suicidal drive of it. i wasn't sure what was going to happen. most of us were completely silent. and then "buuuuut IF YOU LEAVE I JUST DON'T THINK I COULD TAKE IT!!!!!" absolutely incredible. first this division, this distance. then this total collective insanity!

um, i've been surviving thanks to sam / this song which i managed to play on monday nonstop throughout the following:
attending three and a half classes at school, walking to the train station, taking the train to the city, taking the subway to columbia / 116 st, struggling to eat a giant linzer cookie, walking around the campus at barnard attempting to find the admissions office, leaving barnard after my interview, on the subway back to grand central, running for the train, getting on the wrong train, sitting next to a middle-aged dude reading twilight whilst listening to prince, taking the wrong train to the wrong station.
DUPPY CONQUEROR --- SAM BUCK ROSEN.
i love sam. i have a funny story to tell about sam, but i'll save this for when i finally get GET THE MOTION, which is an incredible song, and which i should get soon to give to you. my musican friend anthony (who may soon record an album of christmas carols with booty-droppin' beats featuring some other cool guys) remarked on the "groove" of this song. there is really a groove to it. the first little stanza of lyrics is quite good, too. i can't get over his voice. i've tried to describe it too many times and have failed miserably each time.


because i was just speaking about VW and don't want to make a whole other post about them which is too much even for me, here's them covering classic belgian punk gem, plastic bertrand's "ca plane pour moi," en paris a few days ago...
CA PLANE POUR MOI --- VAMPIRE WEEKEND
it's a bit difficult to understand because it was just recorded on someone's camera. that's okay. you can understand that it was pretty exciting.

YOU SWEAT LIKE A TEENAGER

i wrote a beautiful post about ottoman and it disappeared!


well, here's:
OTTOMAN --- VAMPIRE WEEKEND
this is on the soundtrack for a movie with george michael bluth. but i've been waiting for it a while.

this first came to my attention via youtube video very late saturday night. the sound quality is not good but i got that verse right away, the fingerpicked intro and the way the cello comes in, etc. ottoman's got that classic vw vibe right off the bat - that clean clean clean guitar, the harpsichord and the strings. i love right after the first verse when the harpsichord comes in, the drums here: especially the rhythm of the rimshots. i wish there was more bass but i'm nitpicking. i didn't like the chorus at first but it's growing on me. the verses are absolutely amazing, though. i didn't notice that bit about peter gabriel from cape cod kwassa kwassa is repeated here - that reminds me of architecture in helsinki with what's in store / feather in a baseball cap.

it struck me that this is sexier than the vampire weekend i'm used to. on their self-titled the sexiest they got was "do you want to fuck" and some afro-beat cooing. ottoman is very tender-sounding, especially the very beginning. that first line: "ottoman couch. how handsome your furniture" is so uncomfortable and nervous. ezra koenig's voice has got this emotional, confessional kind of closeness, and a lot of the lyrics he delivers are devastating: "love you now but dressed for a funeral," "begging you to wait for me at the door," and later five incredible words: "you sweat like a teenager." wow. does anyone else feel punched in the face by this? i was saying this to myself all day. to communicate that feeling of embarassing, intoxicating affection in five clever words is stunning.

god, i love this band.



additionally, dig this gem i found on you ain't no picasso!
ELECTRIC FEEL (MGMT COVER) --- KATY PERRY
hahahahaha. all along the western front!