>>> For months, maybe even a year now, we’ve been looking for something. That style, or that band, or that moment that heralds itself through the HQ, that maybe, just maybe, it hasn’t ALL been done before. And God help them for being saddled with this — it will grow to be a crushing weight for them if it isn’t already — but Vampire Weekend have wound up being that thing that we’ve been looking for. That thing that makes you dance wild, that thing that makes you start fanzines, that thing that makes you wear plaids you would have never even considered five minutes ago. In brief: They’re a New York band that melds subtle Afro-pop-isms with smart, cool indie in almost exactly the same way that, say, The Style Council dove into R&B or The White Stripes punked out old blues. Also, most of the Vampire Weekend songs have, as their principal subject, Cape Cod or nature scenes populated by confused (but bright) young people. And we don’t know what else to say: It’s love. We spent a whole afternoon earlier this week scouring the web for as many of their mp3s as we could track down, and then pushing them on everyone who would listen. Everyone who did stopped in their tracks. “This is great,” they’d say. And as the week has worn on, the prospect of going to see them (with everyone we know and are dragging along) open for two utterly forgettable other blogrock bands at Johnny Brenda’s has taken on a common comfort not unlike the one the God-fearing must get when somebody says, “See you in Church!”

I mean, what else can we say? It’s love.
[Photo credit: Esther White]

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 3:11 pm.