Tag: Vampire Weekend

Posted in Listed

10 Favourite Songs of 2024

Posted on by Michael

10. Marshmello and Kane Brown – Miles On It: The cheese factor gets ratcheted up to 10 on this club ready country track. The country style verses of double entendres while singing about a truck gets cranked up when the beat kicks in on the chorus. I probably heard this about 20 times while driving the family around Nova Scotia on a family vacation and every time it came on, the radio got turned up a little bit louder.

9. Shaboozey – A Bar Song (Tipsy):  When this track first started getting airplay in the spring, I was shocked that it was a new song and not something that’s been around for 10 years. After really listening, its easy to hear why.  The song incorporates J-Kwon’s 2004 hit “Tipsy” and the acoustic guitar strumming sounds very similar to Oasis “Wonderwall”. Another country song about drinking is not what the world needed but Shaboozey takes all these influences and makes it his own on the infectious single. 

8. The Smile – I Quit: The downtempo track appears towards the end of The Smile’s second album, Wall of Eyes. I first heard the lyrics “I quit/This is the end of my trip” shortly after abruptly quitting a new job that did not work out as expected. I heard it while out walking on a gloomy wintry day that was more wet than cold. To hear that in that moment was exactly what I needed. I started a terrific new job just a few weeks later.

7. Vampire Weekend – Capricorn: A lyrically unique song tipping it’s cap to those born late in the year. Ezra Koenig’s vocals sound echoey that give the song a dreamy quality over a bed of music that is percussion heavy but with pretty piano lines and deep bass. It’s a really well crafted, terrific single from a solid album.

6. Travis – Bus: Somewhere along the line I lost track of Scottish band Travis. They’ve continued releasing albums while I had moved onto other things. While listening quite a bit to their second album, The Man Who this year, I decided to give their newest album The L.A. Times a try. A fine record that starts with this classy single. It’s a wistful track that sounds lovely with the mournful string section. Travis is back and for the first time in ages, I was back with them.

5. The Libertines – Shiver: The Libertines returned in 2024 with their first album in 9 years. Released early in the new year, “Shiver” is a look back over the majesty of the Albion empire. It’s a classically, elegantly wasted track that is one of their finest.

4. English Teacher – R&B: An updated version of a song the band originally released in 2021, Lily Fontaine’s sings of writing songs for others and not herself on this fiery anthem. The grungy bass of Nicholas Eden gives the track an edge of menace that really bursts into life in the final outro. Listening to Fontaine makes me feel how I felt the first time I heard Poly Styrene from punk band X-Ray Spex. A vital new voice in indie rock music.

3. Idles – Grace: One of the eye catching images in 2024 was seeing Coldplay’s video for “Yellow” on the screen while Idles’ single “Gossip” played over top. The song has a strong low end while singer Joe Talbot sings of “make me pure” and “love is the thing”. It’s a mantra tailor made for these times before it all ends with a snippet that sounds like The Beatles’ “A Day In The Life”.

2. Jessica Pratt – Life Is: The first song on her latest album, “Life Is” sounds like a country song beamed in from another planet. The dreamy vocal makes it sound timeless. While the music doesn’t change too much throughout the tune, it’s Pratt’s voice that swirls around and captures the emotion. It’s a song that can be listened to again and again and discover something new in every repeat.

1. Fontaines D.C. – Starburster: The first single off the band’s 2024 album sounds exactly like it’s title. The track sees singer Grian Chatten spitting out words like a champion rapper on a song that always keeps the kick drum kicking until the relief of the breakdown. It’s a genre smashing track that is an anthem, the chaotic lyrics will have listeners wishing for a new salamander and feel like they can take on the world, burstering some stars along the way. The appearance on Jimmy Fallon was my go to listen as it captures the band in full flight. Iconic.

Posted in Album Reviews

Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us (2024)

Posted on by Michael

“F**ck the world” are the first lyrics heard on Vampire Weekend’s fifth album, Only God Was Above Us. Even with that lyric, the song starts off slow then really picks up with a galloping beat and furious strings a stringing. Like several songs on the album, “Classical” has a rap beat at it’s heart then adds some jazzy horns. The Surfer, cowritten with former band member Rostam Badmanglig, also has a hip hop feel though this time it’s more of a lazy, hazy beat. Koenig’s art school lyrics reach their heights on Mary Boone, the New York art dealer and collector on a track that also incorporates Soul II Soul’s smash “Back to Life”.

Where the album really shines on Ezra Koenig’s songs is the instrumentation of the main trio, including drummer Chris Thomson and bassist Chris Baio. The piano break on first single “Capricorn”, the jazzy bass of “Connect”, the excellent drumming of “Hope” is what really stands out on the 10 track album. While the second half drags slightly, the album never really falls off the tracks and there are plenty of terrific moments like the ones mentioned.  The preppy New York aesthetic is still there but they also travel downtown to add excellent jazz and rap elements as the band expands their sound.

8/10

Posted in Listed

Favourite Albums of 2019

Posted on by Michael

5.  Purple Mountains – Purple Mountains:  The music world lost a lot of great musicians in 2019 including David Berman of Purple Mountains.  This was my first introduction to the man’s music and was touched by many of the lyrics contained here.  Knowing what happened to Berman soon after release makes some of the songs hard to listen to but this is part of his legacy that he passed on to us. Purple Mountains touches on many of the emotions we all feel from time to time and let’s us know we are not alone. This album will live on for a very long time.

4.  Robert Forster – Inferno:  Another long running musician that I was really hearing for the first time in 2019.  Ex of the much-loved Go-Betweens, Forster doesn’t sound dissimilar to Leonard Cohen and at times on tracks like “The Morning” and “Life Has Turned A Page” he offers much wisdom.  Like Cohen, Forster’s music is mature and on the cover he looks dapper as hell.  We can still aspire to be this cool.

3.  Vampire Weekend – Father Of The Bride:  This came out in May and was ready made for the summer. More complex musically than past releases and adding in a few cameos, most notably from Danielle Haim, this continues to increase the range of Vampire Weekend releases.  Many gems to be found here including “Sunflower”, “How Long”, and especially our song of the year – “Harmony Hall”.  Like most albums at 18 tracks long, there are a few that can be skipped but those are relatively few on an album that can be played on repeat for several hours.

2.  Lana Del Rey – Norman Fucking Rockwell!:  This album is getting lots of love even from people who don’t normally show it to Del Rey. Admittedly, the last few albums can be a bit hit and miss at times but this one never lags and distills the best of her sound onto 12 songs. “Venice Bitch” was a favourite from last year and “Mariners Apartment Complex” sounds like a movie in four minutes. “California” and “The Greatest” are timeless tracks that could have been released at any time in the last 40 years.  This is Lana Del Rey’s best album.

1.  Fontaines D.C. – Dogrel:  It’s not very often a straight up rock record gets us this excited but Dublin’s Fontaines D.C. delivered blow after blow on their debut.  It’s amazing that this literary band released poem collections before forming a band, as they seem ready made for the big stages in the UK. “Hurricane Laughter”, “Chequeless Reckless”, and “Boys In The Better Land” are a roar heard across the world as people keep falling for the band’s charms.  This is the best rock album we’ve heard in years.

Posted in Listed

10 Favourite Songs of 2019

Posted on by Michael

10. Lala Lala & WHY? – Siren 042:  A few Lala Lala tracks caught our ear in 2018 but not like this one with WHY?.  The atmosphere on “Siren 042” is a bit sad as Lala Lala apologizes and explains herself in the lyrics but at the same time loses her personality as she makes changes.  This got played a lot in the early mornings.

9. Loma – Half Silences:  The sound is haunting when members from Shearwater and Cross Records get together to record.  The only thing that would make this track better is extending the first instrumental passage for a few more minutes before the vocals appear. This is also our favourite video of 2019.

8. Bleached – Shitty Ballet:  After the release of their debut in 2013, we lost track of Bleached until this first track from their latest album was released in April. The band has a knack of getting songs lodged in the head and this one was no different as we sang, “don’t want to pretend it’s OK when it’s not” throughout the year.

7. Lizzo (Feat. Missy Elliott) – Tempo:  Easily one of the coolest tracks of the year. The steady groove never gets too hyped but always keeps the head nodding along. Lizzo has received all kinds of attention in 2019 and when you can get the queen Missy Elliott on your track, you know you’re doing something right.

6. Sharon Van Etten – Seventeen:  When Van Etten released her newest album, this is the track that everyone latched onto.  It sounds like a female Bruce Springsteen looking back on her younger self while screaming that “I know what you’re going to be”.  In this case, that’s a great place to be.

5.  Billie Eilish & Justin Bieber – bad guy:  Always liked this track but our ears really perked up on the Interrupters version which made us go back and listen to the original even more.  Eilish’s vocals are hushed like she’s hiding in a closet while the simple beat gives Bieber room to really roll with a great vocal performance.

4. Fontaines D.C. – Boys In The Better Land:  Hearing the slower “Roy’s Tune” did not prepare us for this energetic anthem that blared out of our car speakers all summer. Name checking James Joyce, this one also had us Googling what “only smokes Carrolls” means.  This one makes us believe that the (rock) kids are alright.

3. Haim – Summer Girl:  An early morning drive to work and hearing this on CBC Radio 2 had us hooked immediately. Missed this one for the summer but it made our autumn a lot brighter with the mesmerizing saxophone hook.  Almost makes us want to book a trip to LA and have this on repeat.

2. Lil Nas X (Feat. Billy Ray Cyrus) – Old Town Road:  One late evening on stereogum.com we read about the country chart controversy with “Old Town Road” then watched about 20 TikTok videos afterwards. Being purists, we liked the original better but the Billy Ray Cyrus version is fine too.  The “can’t nobody tell me nothing” is the lyric of the year and the fact that the track gets in and out as fast as possible gives the listener whiplash as they hit the repeat button 5x.

1. Vampire Weekend – Harmony Hall:  This was instantly one of our favourite songs of 2019 from the first time we heard it. Listening to the feature on Song Exploder recently, we got the original meaning of the song slightly wrong the first time around but found the actual meaning of beautiful plantation houses being used for weddings fascinating. The sound recalls early VW tracks but is musically far more complex and nuanced.  It may not be the lyric of the year, see above, but “I don’t want to live like this, but I don’t want to die” is certainly right up there.

Posted in Album Reviews

Vampire Weekend – Father of the Bride (2019)

Posted on by Michael

One of my favourite things about any new Vampire Weekend release, is the savage critique that Jim DeRogatis from Sound Opinions levels at it.  While I generally don’t agree with much he says about the band, it is an amusing counterpoint to the near ecstatic reviews the band is used to.  On Father of the Bride, this is no different. With producer and multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij no longer in the band but appearing here, it’s virtually an Ezra Koenig solo effort.  And what an effort.

Once again, the band chose to work with Modern Vampires of the City in demand producer, Ariel Rechtshaid.  Danielle Haim appears throughout the album most notably on the country sounding first track, “Hold You Now” and on what could be a lost Fleetwood Mac number from the 70s, “We Belong Together”. First single, “Harmony Hall” is the standout track from the first half of the album.  Alluding to hate speech appearing in universities, the mostly acoustic verses give way to nice piano bits in the chorus where Koenig makes the, “I don’t want to live like this, but I don’t want to die” lyric sound like an anthem.

Sharing the same name as a Charlie Puth track, “How Long”, has a slinky bassline that powers the music with a killer chorus that could easily be mistaken for the latest slick pop singer on hit radio.  One of the hardest songs here, “Sympathy”, with a vocal that sounds similar to Paul Simon, starts a run of music that is one of the best of the year.  “Stranger” also shares certain Paul Simon vocal influences but this time in a more upbeat, cheerful track.  Coming in at just over two minutes, “Sunflower” and its longer cousin “Flower Moon” both feature Steve Lacy from the band The Internet. “Sunflower” is the strongest of several shorter tracks that appear while the latter has a spoken vocal possibly influenced by Lou Reed.

Coming at eighteen tracks, there are a few slower moments like “Big Blue” that doesn’t leave much of a mark over it’s two minutes and “My Mistake” suffers the same fate. This is minor quibbles on an album that has several runs of great songs.  Coming into summer, this is definitely one to have on for long road trips and days at the beach.  Regardless of what either Sound Opinion guy says, this is one of the best releases thus far of 2019.

9/10