Monday 29 December 2008

it's ok i know nothing's wrong

it'll be very worth your while to check out 'fallin' by jay-z which is on his myspace at the moment. weirdly i've only just gotten into this song despite owning american gangster for a over a year. the production is pretty timeless isn't it, could just listen to it forever. fallin'

oh no seems like i'm fallin' oh no fallin' oh no seems like i'm fallin' oh no fallin' oh no seems like i'm fallin' oh no

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new kanye stuff ISN'T that good so let's stop pretending it is for the sake of it. sounds like a bad chromeo record.

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got the benga album as a treat, only stand-out track on first listen is this, but more may become apparent on further listens. it's cool being back home where i have no music at all, you just get sucked into the same few pieces of music over and over again.

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keep drifting back to the first song of this collection here. that guitar sound is such a mystery to me, it's just everywhere, seems to comprise of no real chords or notes, it's just a fluid, gentle wind blowing through the whole record. the vocals are beautiful too, so wobbly, the lyrics stocky and singular with big pauses, the opposite of the guitar.

it was dinnertime and they wanted to roast my spine, amazin'

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i bet you've been wandering around for weeks now, wondering what i think of vampire weekend, haven't you? well, this blog is all about helping people, real people, people like you, so let my help put those thoughts to rest.

i like 'em, yessirido. when i first read about them i thought they'd be awful. i mean, they sound pathetic in print; ivy league rockers revive paul simon with afropop sounds. but they genuinely work the african pop sound in a way that isn't shameless copying and somehow also isn't the dreaded phrase in music, a 'modern interpretation'. vampire weekend's stuff lies somewhere in the wonderful middle, and everything-the muffled keyboard, the bitty awkward guitar, the yelping-sounds like a really good west african record, but it's not, it's better, or just as good.

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current mango snapple bottle has a picture on the label of a mango with legs and arms writing 'i will go mad' over and over again on a blackboard. don't know what this means, don't want to.

3 comments:

Joe said...

I know I'm in the minority but I still don't get Vampire Weekend. I think the problem is that other bands are dragging them down. I find it hard to break away from putting them in the whole landfill indie thing. If we'd been surrounded by American RnB songs more than anything else for a good year I may well enjoy their afrobeat pop. I guess they are much better than the mediocre MOR rock and away from the edge of that landfill. But I just don't really enjoy them...

Joe said...

Also! Jay-Z did an acapella version of American Gangster which, like The Black Album, led to remixes and various solo productions. Some of them aren't very good, some of them are amazing. I have one which is Jay backed by Fela Kuti which is my fave so far.
x

technicalities said...

Vampire Weekend were one of the last times I suffered from the rockist snob reflex, just reading the description, as you did, but then walling myself off from the quality and joy. On heavy rotation in the shop, always.