Hype was cheap; staying power, even past a few seconds, was invaluable. And even then, an eventual letdown was inevitable. You got it. And they got you. The winks pile up: the flirtatious ones and the strategic-cultural-reference ones. The music industry at that time was post—Napster crash but pre-streaming boom, with Pitchfork ascendant, MP3 blogs like Stereogum and Fluxblog thriving—yes, a decade ago, young tastemakers devoured new tunes one download at a time —and the critical conversation, in those halcyon days before Twitter saturation, transpiring mostly on message boards and, soon, Tumblr.
The trick, of course, was to leap that yawning chasm between the online world and the real one. The gulf between goading someone into downloading a free MP3 and hounding them into plunking down actual cash for a full-length album. The leap from a tepid one-paragraph blog writeup plagiarized from all the other blogs to a full-length interview full of your witty quotes and compelling backstory.
The gulf between desperately selling yourself and confidently helping Apple sell more hardware. The gulf between BrooklynVegan and Gossip Girl. But a hot, new, young rock band that seemed to have a chance of mattering IRL was just enough of an anomaly to warrant taking the leap. That internet ecosystem, by the late s, had its monumental successes and its cautionary tales, too.
For a restless and forever-mutating music press, the whole cycle felt as irresistible as it was inevitable. And it just so happened that Vampire Weekend wrote better songs and were cuter. But Vampire Weekend, with their sophomore album, Contra , proved themselves an anomaly once again. Their detractors were still around and still out for blood.
But can they stop the self-sabotage? MGMT were huge. The duo graced with three festival classics: Time to Pretend provided them with a manifesto, Kids an anthem and Electric Feel a floorfiller. They were part of a group of acts, which included Yeasayer, Passion Pit and Santogold, who went from Brooklyn warehouse infamy to suddenly proper on-David-Letterman famous. Along the way, they inspired a Gucci runway show and made hippy headbands a thing.
Behind the scenes, however, the relationship between the two members was of complementary opposites: the analytical Ben Goldwasser and the free-spirited Andrew VanWyngarden. Now, after years of being out of sync, the oscillations of culture are again lining up with MGMT. They're definitely my favorite new band in a very long time. They've got awesome vocal harmonies and an amazingly tight, self contained, original sound. I'm not gonna try to convince anyone, but I don't think they're over-rated at all.
I've loved everything they've released so far, and I don't think it's fair to categorize them with vampire weekend and the ting tings and every other band that blows up for 5 seconds because of a phone commercial.
If you've just heard the singles, it's really worthwhile to give the album a shot. Check out "Of moons, birds and monsters", "future reflections", or "Weekend Wars". Check out "Metanoia" if you've got an extra 12 minutes and you want to hear someone switch flawlessly from Marc Bolan to Axl Rose. If you've already heard the album, I'd be curious to know what you hate about it.
If you've only heard the singles, I wouldn't pass judgement based on that. Although I like them, they don't represent the scope of the band at all. Find More Posts by zedius. Upon the evidence of three youtube videos: The look of their videos is unbearable. The songs are alright. Will look forward to their second or third album, when I'll actually get round to listening to them properly.
Does anyone else do that? Wait until they've got a bit of experience behind them? Does that make me a prick? Be damned all who sail here. Last time I was in Chicago I spent an hour in a Nazi submarine with a banjo player. Which three youtube videos? I like their older low budget videos, but don't really care either way for the new ones. Vampire Weekend have always acted rather than reacted, a knack which extends to their fortuitous sense of timing. Some fell to the opposite kind of timing, creative exhaustion, or to other bands willing to do the same thing quicker and more broadly.
In the end, though, that surprise is mostly pleasant, since it means another set of songs to unpack, another round of debates to moderate, and another summer soundtracked by some of the keenest pop minds of their generation.
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