Ivy League indie hipsters Vampire Weekend are a difficult band to describe, so we dropped them an email and asked them to do it themselves. The response? "As stated in our charter, we are next-level vibe-exploration plus classic pops."
Hmm. That doesn’t help much, does it? Imagine instead, then, The Libertines covering Graceland-era Paul Simon: trebly, edge-of-collapse guitars jostling for space with loose-limbed, Afrobeat rhythms. It’s a quirky sound, but one that saw the foursome snapped up by XL, home of The White Stripes, within a year of forming.
They’re a brainy bunch, having met as fellow students at Columbia University, and they wear their learning on their sleeves. One of their songs, Oxford Comma, is about what they call “linguistic imperialism.” However, the track we want to draw your attention to is Apunk, which best encapsulates the band’s left-of-centre approach, thanks to its subtly insinuating hooks and oddball instrumentation (is that a synthesized piccolo in the background?).
Vampire Weekend’s debut album is out January 2008. For now, check out Apunk on Myspace.
11:20 AM | 27/09/2007
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