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Albums

Best albums of 2008: #3 Vampire Weekend “Vampire Weekend”

Vampire Weekend formed in 2006 in New York City. The four original band members, Ezra Koenig, Rostam Batmanglij, Chris Tomson, and Chris Baio, met while attending Columbia university and took their name from a short film project that frontman Koenig was working on but never finished.

It is indicative of its time and place that by the time this, the group’s debut, self-titled album was released, two years later, many of its songs were already known or at least familiar to the indie music community. The internet and blogosphere was in full hype machine mode and Vampire Weekend were definite beneficiaries. The debut hit and climbed both the UK album charts and Billboard 200 upon its release. It was met with critical acclaim from most corners but of course, with quick success came backlash, some detractors screaming about theft of world musician thunder by privileged white kids. Interesting, then, and the band did lash back with explanations, that all four members graduated college with student loan debt and that their collective lineages were varied and multicultural.

When I first got a hold of this album, I did so with some excitement. There was so much fun and energy in the songs. The album sounded very DIY, almost like a mixed CD-R, which was likely a result of the self-production and the range of recording locations, including a family member’s basement. And the sound, which many attributed to thievery of afrobeat sounds and compared to Paul Simon’s “Graceland”, I thought more hinted at the world outside of North America rather than outright plagiarism and with its mixture with punk and post-punk sensibilities, was reminded more of music by The Police than Mr. Simon. The lyrics’ subject matter were varied and quirky, name-checking other musicians, grammatical usage, and architectural details, and the music was intelligent, unique, and also just this side of Wes Anderson-ville.

Of course, two albums later (and soon to be a third) and “Vampire Weekend” is considered a classic album by an indie rock world mainstay. It ranked high on many best album lists of its year and decade lists by many music mags, blogs, and websites. And well, looking back, I still love it and can sing along to most of its tracks. Have a sample of my three picks for you and if you haven’t checked out the album as a whole, I highly recommend it.

“M79”: This is one of the first tracks on the album that really caught my attention. And how could it not, really? Bursting forth with harpsichords and orchestral strings, it hops and pogos along with a ska-like rhythm and pace, complete with staccato guitar riffs. But what does it mean? A bit of research confirmed that the M79 is a crosstown bus in New York. So, much like their other tunes, the metaphoric-sounding lyrics by Koenig make a lot more sense to New York habitants and insiders. Words like “No excuse to be so callous. Dress yourself in bleeding madras. Charm your way across the Khyber pass.” are really about dealing with relationships across class and cultural lines in the big apple.

“Oxford comma”:  If the last track was one of the first songs of the album to catch my ear, then this was most definitely the first. Released as the third single off the album, track two sounds so simple, driven forward by the plunk, plunk of organ chords and the sparse rhythm that sounds like it was banged out just using the one drum. Even the guitar that peaks it’s head out of the melody for a solo midway through the song feels free and easy and uncomplicated. And that opening line: “Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?” If designed to catch attention, it certainly does the trick (especially to a grammar geek like me). Vampire Weekend rarely use profanity in their songs so its appearance here says something about the the song’s protagonist’s attitude towards his antagonists’s apparent haughtiness. And yeah, it’s all so damned catchy.

“A-punk”: Talk about energy. Track three is it. Living up to its name, “A-punk” certainly calls to mind the sniper attack of two minutes or less punk, though this tune clocks in just over that time. It’s got skank and slam dance beats, staccato rhythm guitars, and some surprising flute-aping synths give the song some levity. Koenig throws a lot of lyrics at us in such a short span of time, the subject of which are cause for debate. References could be to bands of influence, historical context, more NYC time and place. However, what’s not up for debate, given the “ay, ay, ay” instead of “oi, oi, oi”, is the sensibility. This is a song for dancing to, for letting loose and forgetting it all, a song for Saturday night, a song for partying. Ay, ay, ay!

Check back next Thursday for album #2. In the meantime, here are the previous albums in this list:

10. Fleet Foxes  “Fleet Foxes”
9. The Submarines “Honeysuckle weeks”
8. Schools of Seven Bells “Alpinisms”
7. Glasvegas “Glasvegas”
6. Spiritualized “Songs in A & E”
5. Elbow “The seldom seen kid”
4. Death Cab For Cutie “Narrow stairs”

You can also check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2011: #16 Young Galaxy “Peripheral visionaries”

<< #17    |    #15 >>

2011 marked something of a shift for Montreal’s Young Galaxy.

The musical project had formed six years earlier on the west coast as a duo: Stephen Ramsay and Catherine McCandless. They moved operations to Montreal shortly afterwards and beefed up their membership to record their first two albums. The 2007 self-titled debut was very much guitar-based, dream pop in the vein of Luna and Spiritualized and its successor, 2009’s “Invisible republic”, added a touch of post-punk to darken things up a bit. Though both were very, very good, neither album gained a lot of traction with the buying public.

For the third record, Ramsay and McCandless recorded it in Montreal with Stephen Kamp on bass and then, when it was finished, they shipped it off to Sweden, giving Studio’s Dan Lissvik free rein to make it over. It was released on Paper Bag Records in February of 2011 and on first listen, Lissvik’s touch was salient and indelible. The music was still rooted in dream pop and built upon the shared vocals of its two principals but the sound was more dance-inflected and somehow bigger in range. It also allowed more space for the McCandless’s beautiful vocals to grow. Indeed, it was here that she first began to emerge as frontwoman, taking on the lion’s share of the singing responsibilities.

“Peripheral visionaries” is track six from “Shapeshifting”. Ramsay and McCandless call and response on the ‘verses’ and come together for the ‘choruses’. And I put those in air quotes because the song doesn’t feel like it fits traditional song structure. It just sort of moves along in its own universe. Pulsing and swaying like an organic and ghostly thing built out of mechanical parts. The vocals even sound roboticized through most of the song, that is, up to the point where they come together at the end in an ecstatic and joyous chant: “We have seen tears from the eyes of God.” It’s a thing of beauty.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2011 list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2001: #2 The Charlatans “A man needs to be told”

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Here we are, right near the top of the heap of 2001, and we have an awesome track off the seventh album by The Charlatans, a band considered also-rans of the Madchester era, more than a decade earlier. Yeah, and now they are now considered “survivors”.

Indeed, the group originally formed in 1989 and still continue to tour and release new albums, their latest being album number thirteen, “Different days”, in 2017, though only one member, Martin Blunt, still remains from their very early days. They weren’t from the Manchester area proper and yet they were originally lumped in with the likes of The Stone Roses and The Happy Mondays, more because of their blending of 60s rock sound with that of acid house culture. Their longevity can partly be attributed to their infusing different sounds to each of their albums, not necessarily to always blend in with their environment as some writers have suggested but to keep things fresh.

Released in our year of focus, “Wonderland” was the second album without original keyboard and organ wizard, Rob Collins, who had tragically died a few years earlier in a car crash and who had leant the band their trademark Hammond backbone. His replacement, Tony Rogers, fills in wonderfully but his mark isn’t the most indelible here. Instead, it’s frontman Tim Burgess that shows us a whole new set of colours by spending most of the album in falsetto, brushing the already soul and R&B-tunes with a swathe of Mayfield.

The highlight of the whole album, though, has got to be “A man needs to be told”. In fact, the tune ranks up there with my favourite of their tunes, even though my preference of their sounds is still that of their first couple of albums. It’s so damned laidback and groovy. Yeah, I just used that word. Groovy. Blunt’s funky bass line just booms along, answered in flourishes and tinkling bursts of piano. Jon Brooke’s drumming is spot on, understated but shimmering, right up to the end where the beat picks up substantially. And yeah, that’s none other than Canada’s own, Daniel Lanois adding his pedal steel to the mix, making the whole thing more dreamy. Burgess.

Ready to play it again? Let’s do it.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2001 list, click here.