Last Week: A Good Week to be in New York

Wednesday: Vampire Weekend at the Bowery Ballroom



Saturday: Hot Chip at the Highline Ballroom



Sunday: The New York Giants Win the Super Bowl




Not a bad seven days. It almost makes the hour and a half I spend every day on the subway worth it, doesn't it?

Vampire Weekend at the Bowery Ballroom 1/30/08

How a band like Vampire Weekend has become as big and popular as they have remains a bit of a mystery to me. When The Strokes and Interpol broke there was a certain logic to it, as their style of rook and roll was rooted in a 70's sound (Television, Joy Division, etc.) that never ceases to be uncool. Vampire Weekend, however, reminds everyone most notably of Paul Simon's Graceland, a much-loved if not exactly hipsterish album. The two biggest reasons I can think of are this:

1. The indie world is starved for accessible pop bands. Beyond, say, The New Pornographers, Sufjan Stevens, and maybe Jens Lekman, there just aren't a lot of easily accessible pop artists that have gained widespread acclaim in the indie sphere in the last couple of years. Thus, when a band comes along that can be liked by obsessives and non-obsessives alike, the press tends to get all out of proportion and a pretty good or even really good band gets touted like a great one.

2. The album is one of the great "college" albums I can remember hearing. If this doesn't become a hit album in college towns I'll be stunned. Songs like "Campus," "M79," and "Ladies of Cambridge" do a pretty good job of idealizing early twenties life and college-town life in particular. Considering that most people, including me, remember college with an extreme (similarly out of proportion) fondness, it's easy to see the way this record could connect with people. Also, as fun as it is to hear it now, I bet it's even more fun when you're still in school. I remember being obsessed with the first Modern Lovers record (another great "collge" album) for almost a year in college-it was so fun to hear young life described in a way that seemed to mirror my own experience so well.

Thanks to the generosity of my friend Dana, I was able to catch Vampire Weekend at the Bowery Ballroom on Wednesday. As I expected, the crowd skewed pretty young, though thankfully not in an extreme or annoying way. Plastic Little, the "License to Ill" style rap group, put on a sensational opening performance and almost stole the show.

After maybe a 20 minute break, Vampire Weekend set took the stage. In what was surely a self-aware gesture and acknowledgement of their "preppy" aesthetic, the band came out decked in sweaters and scarves. They proceeded to put on a friendly, fun, but somewhat unspectacular show, clocking in at just about an hour. Although it was a pretty short show, I can't really blame them for this-with one album to your name, how much can you really do? Their smart, African-flavored songs held up well on stage, and their songs are packed with lines and chorused that are a lot of fun to shout along to. Further, a was happy to hear them play an excellent new song as well as give off the same friendly, just-happy-to-be-playing vibe that I felt when I saw the Strokes play shortly after their first record came out.

They also seemed really young, even more than I assumed they would. As my friend Todd pointed out last week, going to shows becomes a little stranger the older you get. Still, it was a good, enthusiastic crowd and I was happy to be a part of it. When the popular "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" was played, everyone sang along like it was an old standard-certainly a testament to the new era in which "cd release parties" (which Tuesday and Wednesday's shows ostensibly were) commemorate records that everyone has already owned for months. Still, I was happy to spend some money to support the band and I'm optimistic that they'll survive the hype and stick around for a while.


(please note: the concert photos above were taken from the Vampire Weekend website. Eventually, I will actually have a digital camera of my own)

Paul Simon's Graceland

After listening to the pleasant, African-inspired pop of the band Vampire Weekend the last couple days, I was compelled to relisten to Paul Simon's Graceland, the record that everyone seems to mention when talking about this band. Considering how much everyone loves Paul Simon's definitive solo record, its really kind of a surprise that more people within the Indie music sphere don't attempt to emulate this sound. Perhaps it's because everyone's afraid that they'll miss the mark and end up in an overcommercial, Dave Matthews-ish territory? What does Graceland do that the others can't? How is it able to sound like a product of the 80's yet still seem fresh and not rooted in that decade? What other record from the last twenty-five years can be enjoyed so much by such a large cross-section of people?

First of all, let me state that I have certain sentimental reasons for loving this record. When I was 4 or 5 my uncle Ed bought this cd and played it for my brother, my cousin, and I. We fell in love with it and preceded to play over and over and over for years to come every time that my brother and I came to visit. Particular favorites were the songs "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" (mp3) and "I Know What I Know." Basically anytime Ladysmith Black Mambazo started doing anything in the background we went nuts and jumped all around the basement, attempting to song along to a style of music we had almost certainly never heard before. There's no doubt, for that matter, that Graceland was the first record I feel in love with.


And why shouldn't I have? The music still sounds great! Besides the obvious African roots of the the record, there is a straight-up tribute to Zydeco on the record as well (on the humorous "That Was Your Mother"), an appearance by Los Lobos on the final track ("The Myth of Fingerprints"), and even a little country on the painfully beautiful title track. This mix of sounds, maybe more than anything else, allows the album to achieve "classic" status. As it doesn't sound tethered to any particular era or genre, everyone is allowed to discover the album without any prejudice about what it should or shouldn't sound like.

That being said, there's no question that Paul Simon's vocals are the thread that holds this album together. I don't know how he does it, but there are few voices in pop music that sound more trustworthy. There's an underdog quality in the way he sings that makes you want to root for him and allows you to forget that he's a giant star making his 20th or so record. As I heard this record before I even knew who Simon and Garfunkel was, I've actually always preferred Paul Simon's solo music and singing voice to his more well-known sixties work (though "The Boxer," of course, is just about the greatest song ever written).

The lyrics are great, too, and have a pleasant mix of light and dark. The line about how the couple in "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" ending up "Sleeping in a doorway/By the bodegas and the lights on upper Broadway" was one of those lines that helped to frame New York in my young mind as an exotic, wonderful place where people party all night and sleep wherever they end up. Hmm...maybe that was true in the 70's and 80's? The song "Graceland" seems to be about the different ways that people try to overcome their grief, his particular method being a trip to Graceland. And I've always loved the way every verse of "You Can Call Me Al" starts off like the beginning of a joke ("A man walks down the street...")

Finally, who can dislike an album that brought us one the the funniest and strangest videos from the 80's?