Vampire Weekend is a New York band whose debut album (released this week) has been critically acclaimed. From The Guardian
Their debut album offers a meticulous hybrid of US indie rock, African pop, reggae and Irish folk, performed by four recent Ivy League graduates, who helpfully dress as recent Ivy League graduates and pose in front of blackboards and so on. That, presumably, is for the benefit of anyone unable to work out their origins from their habits of calling songs things such as Campus or writing lyrics about baroque architecture, forms of punctuation so obscure that even Lynne Truss doesn't understand them, and life among the moneyed twentysomethings of Hyannisport and Provincetown. It sounds like the winning answer to a tie-breaker beginning "the most annoying band in the world is ..."And a great review in Rolling Stone magazine which explains a bit more about the African influence
As for the African thing, Vampire Weekend cite the blog Bennloxo.com as a source of current Afro-pop; one assumes that they're also well-acquainted with Graceland. They're smart enough to know there's a political dimension to Columbia kids borrowing from Afro-pop, and their appropriations seem fairly unspecific. Those appropriations are also tucked neatly into VW's sound: "Bryn" rides the kind of triplet-based polyrhythms both India and Africa could claim, but the tune is a love-struck thing Arcade Fire might turn out. Then there's "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa," the most Afro of the pop tunes here, with a conga groove and register-jumping bass lines. Koenig mentions Benetton. He sings, "This feels so unnatural/Peter Gabriel, too." VW may grow out of this kind of self-consciousness, but the song is warm and well-executed — just like most of their debut.They are also one of the BBC's top picks for 2008.
CD cover for self-titled debut album
clip for 'Mansard Roof'
(live) clip for 'Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa'
clip for 'A-Punk'
(live) clip for 'Oxford Comma'
(live) clip for 'A-Punk'
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