Sucking the Fun Out of Vampire Weekend

The more I read about the backlash to Vampire Weekend, the more I wonder if there actually is any significant backlash against Vampire Weekend. I’ve found few bloggers openly decrying hatred for the boys—only fly-by commenters and message board posters—but plenty of blogs have rushed to the band’s defense. DON’T LISTEN TO THE HATERS. Don’t worry, I can’t hear the haters over all your shouting.

I was all set to offer my own defense of the band as well but I’ve been so exhausted by everyone else’s posts that it seems pointless. I’ll leave at this: if you love Vampire Weekend because they’re the greatest, most original thing ever—you’re wrong; if you loathe Vampire Weekend because they’re not the greatest, most original thing ever—you’re stupid.

People reacting harshly to VW are not reacting to the music; they’re reacting to the hype. The phenomenon, on the surface, seems like the same-old same-old. Band gets love from hype blogs, band gets good review on Pitchfork, band gets hated. Hence the tone of exhaustion in so many bloggers’ defense of the band—“ugh, the backlash is so predictable.”

What’s interesting though is that Vampire Weekend brought it on themselves. More than anything else, the band is being taken down for two reasons: their Ivy League status and their appropriation of Afropop. Both seem like such bullshit things to hate on. Talking Heads came from RISD—never mind Black Dice!—and any number of current indie rockers were borne from a college campus. Would Vampire Weekend be more admissible if they’d gone to a state school? Is their crime that they name drop Louis Vuitton but may have been able to afford the designer luggage prior to forming a band? And the Afropop is an affectation. They wear it like one of their cashmere sweaters. (And they look good in it!) One gets the sense that VW’s next album could be free of the influence but still be full of terrific pop songs. I’d previously equated VW’s refreshing (to my ears) pop to the Shins of four years ago or so (speaking of: another band who never deserved its backlash and who, while deserving of love, never deserved it in such hyperbolic doses). Vampire Weekend should make you happy. Their songs are simple, nice, a little naïve and a little witty, and best of all, wonderfully catchy.

But they brought it on themselves: when did these two issues first reveal themselves? When the band titled a song “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” and released it to the blogs. As-yet unsigned and unknown, the band wrote their own press—they tagged themselves “Upper West Side Soweto.” Both terms lock in the two things they’re being attacked for. To hate the band is really to hate the hype—but to hate the hype is, after all, to hate the band.

Mike Barthel has really honed in on the way the band opened themselves to be attacked for something that likely would never have come up if they hadn’t highlighted it themselves. Barthel uses an earlier post from Marathonpacks and the line from “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,” “It feels so unnatural / Peter Gabriel too” as his jumping-off point:

[Marathonpacks] argues—convincingly, I think—that it wasn't just a self-conscious admission of derivativeness, but a way of beating critics to the punch, not about being derivative, but about appropriating. The song contained its own prediction about reaction to the song, and the assumed reaction went like this: critic hears song, critic recognizes debt to Afropop, critic looks at demographic characteristics of band members (as well as the first two words of the song's title), and critic roundly decries band for stealing the sound of third-world artists.

…

The first problem with this: I remain unconvinced that anyone would have actually had the above reaction, absent that particular line…. In effect, the line created the controversy, making their musical choices into a problematic move that needed to be defended, and once it needed to be defended, then it could be attacked.

I highly recommend reading Barthel’s post in full. It’s easily the best VW-related post I’ve seen on the web, and more so just one of the best blog posts I’ve read, generally speaking, in a really long time. Extra points for invoking Freaks and Geeks.

At any rate, I still question whether the hate is truly as bad as defenders would think. The last time I made this comment it was in relation to Feist; namely, that the music should make you love it or leave you ambivalent. It’s not confrontational enough to inspire anything more.

Here’s my suggestion: scroll past all the Vampire Weekend posts. Don’t read them (okay, Barthel aside). Don’t blog about Vampire Weekend. Don’t comment about Vampire Weekend. Don’t post on message boards about Vampire Weekend. Just put it on. Buy the album and listen to it. And for godssakes, log off while you do it. Read the paper instead. Do the dishes, loll about. Just let the music play and enjoy it. Don’t try and figure out whether it’s being colonialist—be honest, do you even own any fucking Afropop in the first place?—or classist. Just put it on, and see if it makes  you want to put it on again.

Let’s do this for the month of February—no writing or reading about Vampire Weekend; listening only—and in March, we’ll reconvene and see if any of our opinions have changed.

Comments

[Richard]

You know, I understand hating a band, and I can even understand hating a band more than you already might because its popularity or critical acceptance seems out of whack to you, but I don't understand this sort of gratuitous Hating we encounter so often anymore.

I've only heard one Vampire Weekend song (over at the Dusted site), and it seemed like something I could like. But I already know, without trying, a lot about their so-called divisiveness. Whenever any new artist gets any kind of positive buzz, there seems to be these people that come out of the woodwork, whose sole reason for existing appears to be to take artists down a notch. Anonymous attacks, derisive comments about sweaters, bullshit like that. It's like people can't accept that someone else is excited about something, anything. Really tedious.

[Richard]

Also, thanks for highlighting the ClapClap post. He's been posting so rarely that I often forget about him altogether...

"At any rate, I still question whether the hate is truly as bad as defenders would think. The last time I made this comment it was in relation to Feist; namely, that the music should make you love it or leave you ambivalent. It’s not confrontational enough to inspire anything more."

This, I think, points to what I was saying in my first comment. People hated Feist, if they did, largely because she was getting so much praise. Some people apparently can't stand that.

As for Vampire Weekend bringing this all on themselves... I can see that, but it seems to me that they may have stepped into it because of their perception of this whole culture of Hype/Hating/Backlash. So maybe they amp up the irony in anticipation, dunno.

[Brendan K.]

As distastefull so much self-linking can (or has) become, I really think it's warranted here.

http://neonhustle.blogspot.com/2007/11/they-graduated-from-columbia-they-seem.html

Over 2 months ago, I suppose I was a part of the VW "backlash" with my thoughts on the band's "Blue CD-R" that was making the round online. I think that my points remain valid (and we scooped that MarathonPacks post by a day) so I hope people will check that one out.

Since the proper release of "VW," I agree with Pitchfork that the best tracks seem the least in love with their afropop affectation, and that the band is likely influenced as much by Mark Motherbaugh's Wes Andersen score work as they are Ladysmith (well, maybe not QUITE as much, but still...)

I also still find the term "Upper-West Side Soweto is totally offensive and insensitive at best, and I don't give the band a pass for doing their own amateur PR work. At some point intellectual decisions are made to either defend one's own rhetoric or not, and VW have failed to do so in my humble opinion.

[scott pgwp]

Brendan, thanks for reminding me of your post. I read it back when I discovered your site in December, though at the time had only listened to two or three VW songs.

Still, at the time I vaguely disagreed with you, and now that I've listened to more tracks (I haven't picked up the full album but I have six or seven of the songs that have been floating around since last year), I still disagree with you.

I was discussing my above post with my wife last night (she hadn't read it yet) and she brought up the simple point that VW, in fact, are not pretentious. They're not throwing up some kind of Ivy League/preppie schtick, a la Boyz II Men in their matching sweaters and plaids--they are Ivy League preppies. They're not "exploiting" the music or people of Africa - the afropop is a gloss, and "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" is about afropop being a gloss. The key line is not the "Peter Gabriel" line; it's "stayed up all night / to see the dawn / in the colors of Benneton" - a reference to Olivero Toscani's controversial ad campaign for the clothing ling. What Toscani did is fraught with real controversy - nothing like what VW are doing. If it weren't for this one song, and the PR sheet that accompanied it when it was first released, the band wouldn't be experiencing this backlash (you might also argue that they wouldn't be experiencing success, either).

If anything, as my wife argued last night, VW are completely honest about what they're doing. Transparant, even. (This is precisely what Barthel is reacting to in his post.) I think they're too up front about their background, and too much a part of a well-established WESTERN pop lineage, to be considered truly exploitive, or anything other than a terrific pop band.

[Brendan K.]

Two things to note: First, I don't mean to hide my disdain for preppies, but it is only a disdain rooted in traditional liberal white middle-class guilt and nothing any more sinister. I don't begrudge anybody their acceptance to a good college, and I certainly don't expect what I refer to as "authenticity of experience" to ignore personal background, etc.

Second, I think you do way too much work that Koenig and co. seem to refuse to. You claim that it's all innocent enough because they are genuine preppies, yet their self-awareness allows for both safe references to Luis Vuitton and somehow maybe an implied... what? Criticism of Benneton? Why? Preppies wear Bennton, or at least they type of college freshman who rocks the LV is probably gonna find the brands in the same marketplace.

If they are merely representing personal-ish experience- hearts a-twitter, yuppies in love, etc- I certainly won't hold Koenig's feet to the fire for not lambasting the chick he's trying to make out with, but that will just reify the sense that preppies are dicks and that it's easy not to care about the world when you have means to ignore it.

VW can't have it both ways just to sidestep/preempt their critics. Further, I think you're just nonresponsive to the question of VW's juxtaposing the privileged elite of their own apparent lifestyles with the degradation of South Africa in a region whose poverty is largely the lecgacy of Apartheid ghettoization itself. Upper-West Side Soweto has a nice ring to it, but it's still kinda fucked up.

[scott pgwp]

>>yet their self-awareness allows for both safe references to Luis Vuitton and somehow maybe an implied... what? Criticism of Benneton?

No, not a criticism of Benneton; a recognition that what VW are doing, and what the fictional girl in their song is doing, is a continuum of what Peter Gabriel did and what Benneton did, among others--a crossing of cultures and class divisions, some more politicized (Benneton) than others (the girl). To criticize VW's "juxtaposing," as you put it, is to criticize them all, many more so than VW.

Koenig is not mocking the girl in his song, because the very song itself is guilty of what the girl is guilty of.

[Ms Fab]

Hi Scott, Transparency doesn't give you a pass on anything. People who are like, "Oh, I'm an asshole" are still assholes. Consciousness of it does not make you a better person, it just makes you a conscious asshole.

I've actually been to Soweto multiple times, and I feel very comfortable saying that the guys in VW are utter dipshits for saying that nonsense. The fact that they're smart enough to know better makes it worse, IMHO.

Also, I do have plenty of Afropop in my collection. And I'm not that impressed by what VW has done with their influences either.

[krista]

i completely agree with you. just put on the record, let it play, and enjoy it! I know that's what i did. And what i love about VW is even though they are getting so big they are still the down to earth people.
They are not caught up in the fame.