Spring Weekend Review: Vampire Weekend/Lupe Fiasco

In theory, Vampire Weekend and Lupe Fiasco didn’t seem like the most logical bill. Apart from the intellectual vibe given off by Vampire Weekend’s Columbia educations and Lupe’s thoughtful lyrics, there wasn’t much common ground between the laid-back, poppy rock and serious, energetic hip-hop on their respective albums. However, Vampire Weekend ended up being the perfect warm-up for Lupe: they certainly didn’t upstage him, but they held their own. The band had sound and energy that no one who’s heard their catchy but anemic self-titled debut would expect. Drummer Chris Tomson was loud, driving, and everything a good drummer should be. “A-Punk” sounded like it might actually have some punk in it, while “I Stand Corrected” was transformed from a nice ballad into a power anthem.

Lead singer and guitarist Ezra Koenig’s vocals were also significantly more energetic and unique than they are on Vampire Weekend, and his stage presence was as casual and friendly as the dorky sweaters sported by several band members. While Vampire Weekend has some great songs, with only one album out they’re forced to play some duds (for example, the only interesting part of “Blake’s Got a New Face” was the name), and these unmemorable songs fell flat. Still, for a nice-but-bland band like Vampire Weekend this Spring Weekend performance was a truly impressive showing.

While Vampire Weekend put on a solid show, Lupe Fiasco was definitively the real attraction of the night. With the help of one side man and a DJ, Lupe put on a straightforward show that was consistently enthralling and fun. The focus was squarely on Lupe’s clever rhymes, with the beats and hooks occasionally omitted. Hooks have never been Lupe’s strong point, especially when it comes to the mostly aggressively un-catchy choruses on his most recent album Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool, so not much was lost. Lupe is a true performer, executing skateboard jumps and tricky hand movements while looking like he’s having even more fun than the audience. Stage banter rarely overstayed its welcome and featured an apology for the materialism in “Gold Watch” and a short but fervent speech encouraging political consciousness and action.

Lupe’s flow is almost as good as his lyrics, whether it’s slow and sexy on “Paris, Tokyo” or hyperspeed on the aptly named “Go Go Gadget Flow.” He raced though a big, loser-free set of songs from both of his albums, sometimes switching up the beats like on “Sunshine” or lacing together shorter sections of songs. His breakout song “Kick, Push” sounds as fresh as new hits like the crowd favorite “Superstar.” The Grammy-winning “Daydreamin’” was a fantastic encore and ending to an enjoyable, professional performance.

Guilty Pleasures Week: A Techno Treatise

When I’m in my room with my headphones on, that can only mean one thing. Thanks to my tolerant roommate, I’m usually able to blast my music freely from my small but competent desktop speakers. However, there’s one pseudo-genre I love that’s just between me and my iTunes: cheesy techno. Techno isn’t really the right moniker for this music (it’s more a mix of house and Euro), so I prefer to think of it as the Gunther genre after everyone’s favorite bemulleted Swedish pleasure man. You know the sound: heavy on the synth hooks, possibly with some accented pop vocals for good measure. The more vapid the lyrics, the better—for example, there’s Toybox’s aptly named “Tarzan Song” and its chorus of “Tarzan is handsome, Tarzan is strong / He’s sweet and cute, and his hair is long,” not to mention Gunther’s own “Ohhhh…you touch my tra-la-la.”

It’s obvious why this kind of music is played at parties if you’ve ever seen a dance floor electrify when Cascada comes on, but you’d think that the Gunther genre wouldn’t have any purpose outside this sphere due to its complete lack of depth. That’s why I normally keep my love of this music away from the prying ears of my Keeney hallway. In fact, the dance hits just aren’t enough for me—I regularly scour the dance music forum puroeuro.com for even more. While I’m not an electronic expert, I do listen to a lot of the critically acclaimed (or just not critically mocked) examples of the genre, artists like, Daft Punk, Simian Mobile Disco, and The Knife. When I have great music like this to satisfy my cravings for bass and blips, why would I seek pleasure in soulless songs with lyrics like “Ding dong, it’s a Christmas song” and titles like “Phonesex”?

Frankly, I think it comes down to the basic human desire for instant gratification. Songs like these are all about delivering the maximum amount of ear candy. The best cheesy electronic songs are simply layers of both obvious and subtle hooks mixed with solid beats. Like McDonald’s French fries, they’re fast, crisp, and tasty. I don’t just listen to a great Gunther genre track like Danijay’s “Arcobaleno,” I’m addicted to it, salivating until my favorite parts and wishing I could hear them over and over. In contrast, a Daft Punk song utilizes some of these instant gratification techniques but functions more as a cohesive unit, a more difficult task that’s worthy of respect. Still, crafting musical crack requires undeniable skill and the ability to tap into our most primal aural needs. Maybe Gunther deserves a little more credit than we’re currently giving him. Anyways, it’s definitely time for me to shout my love from the rooftops: my name’s Eva, and I’m a cheesy techno addict.

Can't Get You Out of my Head (by Sydney Harris)

Walking to the Ratty this morning for a 3 p.m. breakfast, I experienced a sudden irrepressible urge to hear Vampire Weekend’s “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa.” Had I attempted to ignore this impulse, I suspect that my head would have exploded on site. Fortunately, my need was immediately satisfied by my personal headset, with which I have a complicated relationship. My serious and perhaps incurable addiction to music renders my headphones virtually indispensable. The prospect of my favorite bands joining me on my morning commute motivates me to get out of bed, especially in winter when I would otherwise refuse to step outside my dorm.

More than a just convenient tool, I contend that headphones are also a social phenomenon. With such an array of aesthetic and utilitarian variables, a person’s headset communicates almost as much about their character as the music piping through the earpieces. The potentially deafening earbuds that come standard with the ubiquitous iPod can say, “I’m a minimalist,” or, “My future ability to discern sounds does not concern me.” The message of flashier models is basically “I am an incredibly hip audiophile with no time to spare for you or the vapid conversation in which you may attempt to engage me.” The little white buds give me a headache, so my own headphones fall into this latter category, thereby introducing a psychological dilemma.

When I wear my headphones, other people have no idea that I tend to value the presence of live human beings over disembodied sound recordings. With my brain entirely devoted to music that no one else can hear, each person I meet is forced to compete with the Cure or PJ Harvey for my attention, and who could hope to prevail in such a battle? I visualize my friends succumbing to inferiority complexes, institutionalized for their feelings of inadequacy. Then again, my headphones do become quite handy when I encounter someone whose voice causes bile to rise in my throat. They also stimulate the voyeur in me; I delight in watching other people dance publicly to their music as wildly as they would in their own rooms. In my imagination, that girl carrying a Louis Vuitton tote secretly enjoys hardcore punk through her pristine earbuds, just as that huge football player silently taps his foot to Feist.

All in all, headphones are not inherently evil devices. What I really take issue with is the isolationism running rampant in our society of personal gadgets and text messages. Nevertheless, since I find it nearly impossible to accomplish everyday tasks without musical aid, I guess I’ll have to embrace the necessity of these seemingly innocuous devices. For any interested parties, I am starting a support group for personal headset addicts. Meetings will be conducted entirely in writing so that members may concentrate on the mp3s of their choosing.

(Picture courtesy of hypebeast--yes, they are crystal-encrusted.)

REVIEW: Los Campesinos!-Hold On Now, Youngster...

Stressed-out college students of America, your wait is finally over. Los Campesinos! has finally discovered the perfect cure for your midterm malaise—the strong dose of energetic indie pop provided on their debut full-length Hold On Now, Youngster. The band’s homeland of Wales isn’t exactly known for its pleasing climate and sunny skies, which seems to have forced the seven-person group to make their own sunlight with warm, smooth boy-girl vocals, fast guitar hooks, and even a freakin’ glockenspiel. In many ways, they pack a similar pop-punk-punch as Fallout Boy, but with Morrissey and the Stooges as actual influences and not just buzzwords.

As the album title implies, this is a young band making young music. Lyrical themes including doodling skeletons “to get across a sense of impending doom,” and they’re not afraid to whip out song titles like “This is How You Spell ‘Hahaha, We Destroyed the Hopes and Dreams of a Generation of Faux-Romantics.’”

The lyrics are honest, vibrant, and clever, and the songs themselves are just as charismatic. Buzz song “You! Me! Dancing!” has been around the blogs for a while, but it still feels fresh despite clocking in at almost seven minutes. “Drop It Doe Eyes” features a sweet string-laced chorus of “Deer die with their eyes wide open” but keeps it from getting maudlin with an intense buildup to a frantic ending, and the follow-up track “My Year in Lists” maintains the energy for less than two minutes of sheer exuberance. In fact, Los Campesinos! is one of the most genuinely exuberant bands to enter the rock scene in a while, making Hold On Now, Youngster the perfect album to lead us into spring.

5/5

All Points West

What’s the one thing Coachella, Lollapalooza, and Bonnaroo have in common other than their status as massive, highly respected music festivals? They’re nowhere near the East Coast. For many Brown students, that makes attending these festivals an ordeal or an impossibility. This summer, however, there’s no need to permanently move to Tennessee for Bonnaroo access or tattoo corporate logos on your body for Lollapalooza road-trip money. The New York City area is featuring the brand-spanking-new All Points West Music & Arts Festival on August 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th (for those looking to maximize the rock, it’s the weekend after Lollapalooza).

Located in Jersey City’s Liberty Park, All Points West features a scenic view of the Statue of Liberty and New York City. Of course, you’re not paying for the view. For such a young festival, All Points West has an extremely strong lineup of festival favorites and latest things. It’s also a solid mix of mainstream crowd-pleasers and hipster darlings. Radiohead will headline on both Friday the 8^th and Saturday the 9^th in what looks to be the bands only New York area appearance on its upcoming tour, while frat boy hero Jack Johnson plays Sunday night.

Friday’s lineup is currently the most appealing and pop-influenced, as it includes the New Pornographers, Brazilian dance-rockers CSS, mashup king and Spring Weekend performer Girl Talk, and the smooth singer and violinist Andrew Bird. On Saturday, don’t miss the crazy kids in Animal Collective, the cheesily slick dance music of Chromeo, and former Spring Weekend success The Roots. Husky-voiced Cat Power and cool buzz band The Black Kids perform Sunday. It’s going to be a smaller festival than its contemporaries as far as ticket sales and attendance are concerned, but there’s nothing small about this lineup. For music fans, All Points West will hopefully serve as a starter festival, weekend day trip or sacred pilgrimage for years to come.

REVIEW: The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride

What, no concept album? It’s difficult for a diehard Mountain Goats fan to not pose this question after hearing Heretic Pride, the latest album from John Darnielle and company. Darnielle’s been crafting concept albums since 2002’s harrowing Tallahassee, a fictional portrait of bitter middle-aged drunks trying to keep their life together. 2005’s The Sunset Tree is his best effort to date, featuring humbly affecting melodies and heartwrenching lyrics about growing up in an abusive home and dreaming of escape and revenge.

Sadly, The Mountain Goats followed The Sunset Tree a year later with the breakup-themed bummer Get Lonely. The tunes were mostly mellow to the point of stagnation, and if you think it’s hard listening to someone whine about their breakup for 45 minutes imagine it in album form. That’s why the prospect of a non-concept Mountain Goats album held some promise. Darnielle seemed to have run out of truly compelling personal stories on Get Lonely, and Heretic Pride had the potential to be a return to the fascinating short fiction he’s always done well.

It’s true that Heretic Pride’s lyrics live up to expectations. “Marduk T-Shirt Men’s Room Incident” is a detailed character study of a sweaty, zonked-out metal fan that also reveals aspects of the narrator’s life and personality, making it succinct but multifaceted and complete. The stomping, scary “Lovecraft in Brooklyn” features images of “Hubcaps on the cars like funhouse mirrors” and our beloved state of Rhode Island as it “drops into the ocean.” Every song has at least one truly memorable line, from “I am this great unstable mass of blood and foam” in “Autoclave” to “When the scum begins to circle the drain / Everybody loves a winner” in the awesomely named “Michael Myers Resplendent.” We’ve come to expect this level of lyrical prowess from The Mountain Goats, and for some fans it’ll be enough to make the album enjoyable.

However, once considered apart from its lyrics Heretic Pride features some of Darnielle’s worst songwriting yet. One example of this can be found in the intros to “Sax Rohmer #1” and “Autoclave”—separated by only two songs, they’re practically interchangeable with essentially the same starting note and tempo. This sameness pervades the album, and there’s none of the drama that would befit Darnielle’s dramatic lyrics. There’s a sense that you’ve heard all these songs before, albeit with worse lyrics. Darnielle’s proven that he’s capable of writing catchy, powerful tunes, so where the heck are they? Ultimately, Heretic Pride will only satisfy the fans who hang on to Darnielle’s every word while tuning out all the rest.

REVIEW: Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

After the breakup of both his relationship and band about two years ago, Bon Iver (real name Justin Vernon) moved to an isolated cabin in Wisconsin where he hunted and made music for three months. The resulting For Emma, Forever Ago is remarkable for its sincerity. At his show at AS220 last winter, even a deaf person must have found the intensity remarkable with Vernon, sweating like Shaquille O'Neal, eyes either clenched shut or tearing, essentially squeezing out the vocals in his tender falsetto. Mixing that falsetto, multi tracked guitar strums, and his own background harmonies, Vernon provides everything from a a triumphant trumpet section on the title track to a winning single with a Cat Stevens like chorus in 'Skinny Love' . Never lost in the sad bastard lyrics is a real pop sensibility that keeps the songs playing on repeat in your head long after you've stopped listening. The problem with making music by yourself is that you miss out on a producer's advice, namely, to make songs that don't tend to run together, especially the instrumental and boring 'Team'. That said, for a record made in isolation, Bon Iver manages to create an incredibly universal feeling.