[Editor's Note: This is our new column Hype of the Week, curated by the one and only Jason Josephes. It is true the Jason is the booker at the Blue Moon Tavern. It is also true he was writing about music with Pitchfork before people knew or cared about Pitchfork. He's got opinions, and he's not afraid to say them out loud. -josh ]
Hype of the Week examines a song currently dominating the blogwaves and weighs in with one opinion on whether the attention is deserved, or just a load of bull.
So Vampire Weekend has a new song out. I must admit that I’m not too familiar with the band, except for a few articles that complain about these young white kids copying the music of darker skinned people. Gosh, that’s never happened in rock and roll before! Their self-titled 2007 debut release was a big hit in indie rock circles. Accolades from Rolling Stone and Spin followed, along with a support slot touring with The Shins. If that wasn’t enough, no lesser an appropriator of Africana than Peter Gabriel covered their single “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” last year.
I’ll admit to missing out on all of this when it went down. I don’t think I’ve heard a note of Vampire Weekend until today. Today, only because I’ve been asked to listen to them. See, a second album is on the horizon with a January release date and lofty expectations for the NYC-based band’s sophomore salvo. Anyhow, they have a new single out called “Horchata” that caused Pitchfork’s Ryan Schreiber to tweet “Fucking “Horchata”, jesus. I can’t get this song out of my head. Who knows a quality exorcist?” Is that a compliment or a curse? Let’s find out by listening to it five times in a row.
FIRST LISTEN: You know that song from documentaries on Africa they play when the birds all scatter at once and the camera flies over the majestic plain? The chorus of voices and all that jazz? The giraffe silhouetted against the sunset before the camera cuts to the indigenous people washing their clothes in the river and the women dancing and waving stalks of wheat? Yeah, that’s the chorus to this song. It puts me this much closer to my lifelong dream of a musician saying “My influences are PBS and Michelob Light.”
SECOND LISTEN: OK, so no need to bring Michelob Light into this. I’m not trying to cause a scene. However, it turns out that horchata is not a made-up word, but is “the name for several kinds of traditional beverages, made of ground almonds, sesame seeds, rice, barley, or tigernuts.” Well, I guess it’s better than yet another song about weed. I pay more attention to the verses this time out. Lots of precious xylophone commentary and low-key bubbles of beats. I can already see the Volkswagen commercial – indeed, the middle section of the song is perfect for displaying how the seats fold down to make more room for groceries, the kids (backseat DVD screens!) and mom wryly smiling before pulling the car out onto the open road. It’s not an inappropriate image, for the whole soundtrack hones in on universal truth-type lyrics like “Here comes that feeling that you have forgotten.” Indie rock, meet mid-life crisis. (You know, American Beauty used a xylophone in its score, too. Just saying.)
THIRD LISTEN: After five minutes of research, I now know that people compare these guys to Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel. I don’t hear it. Sure, they’re aping the icons’ previous advances on African music, but it’s too clinical. I don’t hear much heart and the intrusive drums on the PBS refrain sound cold and mechanical. However, I’ll say it’s interesting to hear lead singer Ezra Koenig head down the song’s homestretch with the line “You understood so you shouldn’t have farted.”
FOURTH LISTEN: OK, according to a lyrics search, the line was “You understood so you shouldn’t have fought it.” Not what it sounds like to me, but given the faux-British vocal inflections and the rest of these lyrics (“In December drinking horchata, I’d look psychotic in a balaclava” for instance) I’ll concede that it would be a long way to go to stick their landing on a whoopee cushion. Then again, the aforementioned Paul Simon wrote some humdingers back in the day. For example, “These are the days of lasers in the jungle.” Made no sense when he dropped that on our heads in 1986, but then the next year, the sci-fi action classic Predator came out, and what did we get? Lasers in the jungle. Maybe this means next year Bruce Willis will be kicking ass while drinking ground sesame seeds. Yippie-ki-yay, Brooklyn hipsters.
FIFTH LISTEN: What’s really annoying are these words that I don’t know. What’s Arancita? A type of sparkling beverage according to Ol’ Lady Internet. It is not, as I suspected, a nonsense word meant to fit the rhyme scheme. Balaclava is a word I know I’ve heard but need to look up. Ah, here it is – a hat. So we have two beverages and a hat and pincher crabs and “lips and teeth to ask how my day went.” And in the end, it all sounds and seems so… slight. This song checks in, rolls around on the bed, and leaves within four minutes. It’s like how I could never finish reading David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest because of those stupid pictures of the brooding author wearing a bandana. THIS is the future of literature? And sure, that’s a cheap cop out – it’s not like the bandana was the one who committed suicide. So either my ears are broken or the Vampire Weekend crew read The Tipping Point and figured out how to move these units of sound. Since it’s all a matter of individual taste, this writer considers Horchata to be a bandana that you can’t take off.
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