(Indie Central LXV) Modern Indie of the Fok!-forum

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Op donderdag 9 mei 2013 15:03 schreef Arn0 het volgende:

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Niet meer geraakt, (..) Kon onmogelijk thuis geraken.

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The theme? Modern life and insecurities. I suppose that's a bit vague, but the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. It's about Inner city life and the struggle and disillusionment with growing up. Obvious Bicycle is a dark, dark opening. Oh you outta' spare your face the razor, Because no one's gonna' spare the time for you. Essentially, don't bother getting up, this world is a vampire (sic). You're in your 20s and nothing is going for you. In fact, get back with your witch of a girlfriend and spare the world a traitor.It's such a powerful opening track, full of metaphors about waking up, starting again, the beginning of a doomed journey, opening your eyes to adult life for the first time.

The segue into unbelievers is brutal. Ezra opines about the torture of his lack of faith; pouring his heart out about how atheists can have soul and warmth, even if it feels like they're accused of having none. I feel the chorus is dripping with sarcasm: We know the fire awaits unbelievers/ All of the sinners, the same/ Girl you and I will die unbelievers/ bound to the tracks of the train. He seems SO frustrated with the world and its lack of faith... in science and logic. He seems overcome with religion and it surrounding him; I’m not excited, but should I be? - He fails to see the draw of blind faith and is struggling to love in a world so blinkered...Coming from a strong active atheist background, this song sings to me more than any on the album.

Now, of course, the underlying metaphor of this song is craftily hidden: Who are the we in the song? Is it simply Ezra and his girlfriend? Or is to do with the growing isolationism in America; the dichotomy between North and South, between city and countryside. The division is growing stronger and deeper. From a New York standpoint, a quintessential Liberal, 'unbeliever city' he feels marooned.

This sense of being marooned in the city with like minded people is continues through into 'Step', where Ezra tells a tale of love-lost betwixt he and a young lady he knows, most probably at college in a different city. I think he's looking in the mirror and talking to himself: Every time I see you in the world, You always step to my girl: He makes mistakes with his relationships, does the wrong things and generally fucks things up. Throughout this song he muses on why he fucked up this relationship, but decides that because he was young and naive, he'd probably make the same mistakes if he lived through it again. But that doesn't stop him wanting her back and having the house, the car in the drive, the Pickett fence and the lady on his arm. The gloves are off, the wisdom teeth are out What you on about? I feel it in my bones, I feel it in my bones: That horrible sinking feeling in a relationship when it all goes wrong.Towards the end of the song I get the impression she has passed way: The truth is she doesn't need me to protect her, because she's already gone, We know the true death -- the true way of all flesh Everyone's dying, but girl -- you're not old yet She's not old yet, because she's been preserved in his memory, the way she was.

So Diane Young (or dying young - I picked this idea up from Songmeanings.com, but It totally fits) seems to be about that catastrophic self defeating spiral of destruction. Drug use, violence, YOLO BITCHES. Heavy with metaphors about not making it to the end: Do you think you can go til the 18th hole, So grab the wheel, keep on holding it tight
Til you're tottering off into that good night. This links nicely from the previous song about love=lost. That hopelessness you can feel from letting people go and the resulting death-wish. Is life worth living? Speaking directly about the production, I would have rather that pitchy effect was done simply with his voice going up and down. The guitar sliding up and down just reinforces that chaotic partying till you drop and pass out. Music video for this should clearly be hitting up some NYC clubs and getting fucked up! Pretty straightforward song, but important in the context of the album if you consider it has a logical passage of time in the narrative, particularly after step

Passing of time... Important for progression in Don't lie. It's almost like the hangover after Dianne Young. He reflects on the futile nature of all this partying and messing about, but feels conflicted by it all: Young bloods can't be settling down. He obviously realises dieing young isn't the way to go. The clock is ticking away, there's a train to catch: There's a whole lifetime ahead of you. Should he go back to his past? Old flames they can't warm you tonight/ so keep it cool my baby Again the song is aimed at himself; he is telling himself not to lie, to be true to himself: What does he want from life?

The section where the ticking comes in is my favourite 20 seconds of music this year:

I want to know, does it bother you? The clicking of a ticking clock. There's a headstone right in front of you. There's a life time right in front of you I don't think anyone has ever put that paranoid, nihilistic, solipsistic hammer that bangs away at your being so elegantly. Not sure what he's saying at 2.30, but it sounds like Don't lie, I want Him to know, God's loves die young, are you ready to go? Ezra returns to that subtle theme about religion and losing one's religion. It's the last time running through snow: That feeling of running away from one's religion.

The song finishes beautifully with a fantastic riff; a cherry on the top.
Wow. We are all afraid to die alone. Either, physically or spiritually; It's a horrible feeling, but he completely nails it.

Hannah Hunt:
Now this seems to be a turning point in the album: A road trip obviously, with his new love. The tone of this song moves from nihilism towards a future that is not so bleak. It's a turning point. Yet he quickly points out that he and Hannah have religious difference. A man of faith said hidden eyes could see what I was thinking
I just smiled and told him that was only true of Hannah. Despite this, there seems to be something worth hanging onto. He just can't trust himself to do the right thing. He feels that religion will tear them apart.: If I can't trust you, then dammit, Hannah There's no future, there's no answer
I love the high pitched chorus here as it fits perfectly with the dilemma he's in.

Everlasting arms
Clearly his torn feelings continue and he's pushing her away. The religous battle continues: If you’ve been made to serve the master
You be fronting by the open night, Could I have been made to serve a master,When I’m never gonna understand, never understand: He can't abide their differences. The everlasting arms are obviously a metaphor for the afterlife, which he'll never enter with her, but he pleads to someone or something, in his darkest hours, to make him understand. So the chorus is Ezra crying out to a god that doesn't exist...

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Op donderdag 9 mei 2013 17:25 schreef Kerftminister het volgende:
Vind de nieuwe Vampire Weekend maar saai eigenlijk.

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Vampire Weekend - Ya Hey (XL)

‘Ya Hey’ is a song about God. Ya + Hey = Yaweh a.k.a. God.

God and myself used to be best buddies. He was omnipotent, omnipresent and remarkably understanding about my teenage impulses. I was shy, short-sighted and suffering from chronic acne. It was a match made in heaven.

Although God doesn’t ask for much in return for your belief, his representatives on Earth can be quite demanding. They asked me to wear a silly dress every Sunday and hit a gong when it was time for everyone to drink his son’s blood. They asked me to spend three days walking to Salisbury Cathedral as a physical metaphor of my love for him. Worst of all, they asked me to eat a Passover meal one Easter that consisted solely of unleavened bread and hummus. It was disgusting... like wash your mouth out afterwards disgusting.

Despite the whole Christianity thing being hugely time-consuming, pretty much everyone I met through the medium of Jesus was uniformly pleasant. My church’s youth club meant I got to spend an improbable amount of time with real life girls, which was remarkable turn given my general levels of self-esteem. Plus, I’ve only ever seen a priest naked once and that was in the gym showers, so it really doesn’t count.

Anyway, I think you get the gist by now. Me and God were tight, until I got sick. Sick to the extent that I was sat down in a disinfectant-riddled doctor’s office and told there was a strong chance I wouldn’t live to celebrate my 18th birthday.

Without wishing to trivialise the experience of anyone who is currently undergoing six courses of chemotherapy, it’s an irredeemably shit treatment for a uniquely horrible illness. As well as ruining the big stuff you enjoy in life like football in the park and styling a Morrissey-esque quiff with your hair, it also ravages the small nuggets of everyday enjoyment.

For example, the pills you’re prescribed as part of the ‘experience’ transform your tongue into a glutinous ball of fuzz with an extremely faded sense of taste. To circumvent this side effect you tend to eat strongly-flavoured salty meat for almost every meal. In hindsight, I didn’t really like wafer-thin ham in the first place but I’ve never forgiven cancer for placing my love of bacon under such intense scrutiny.

Although people’s coping mechanisms for dealing with the illness vary dramatically, the most common reaction is some sort of anthropomorphism. In other words, you project human characteristics onto a collection of bastard cells and then ascribe these traits to the people surrounding you. This usually spells bad news for a patient’s family as they get the brunt of a pent up rage that’s sick of ham sandwiches, wearing an insanely itchy wooly hat and being stuck playing goalie.

I didn’t lash out much at my family. I had God for that instead.

‘I’m a B grade student. Why didn’t you give cancer to the boy who handed his coursework in late?’

‘I once went to church three times on 24 hours. Why didn’t one of the people who only went twice get it?’

‘You promised me an eternal afterlife. Can’t I just get three more years right now?’

If you’ve never bothered with religion, the concept of absolutely despising someone who doesn’t exist must seem laughable. You can’t be betrayed by an idea. You can’t be embarrassed about dedicating your childhood to the 10 Commandments when underage boozing and shoplifting from the Woolworths pick ‘n’ mix would have been a lot more fun.

Now vomiting is no longer an inevitable part of my morning routine, this all-consuming sense of shame has faded. I can go to church for Easter and Christmas on the basis that I just switch off from the moment I pick up the hymn booklet. Every now and then, I do reflect on the time I went to Jesus camp and issue an impromptu snort of derision.

This is probably why ‘Ya Hey’ caught me completely off guard.

No offence to Vampire Weekend but making sense has never been their strong suit. “Sometimes I think I know what they [the songs] mean and I’m listening to the lyrics and then you go ‘Peter Gabriel too’ or ‘Louis Vuitton’ out of nowhere and then I’m lost,” deadpanned Steve Buscemi during a recent YouTube promo clip. Such is the abstract nature of Ezra Koenig’s vocabulary that both times I’ve seen his band live, the crowd had a better time impersonating the tremolo guitar on ‘Mansard Roof’ and ‘A-Punk’ than singing along to lines like, “His Honor drove southwards seeking exotica.”

That’s not to say there are no recurring motifs in Vampire Weekend’s music. Over the course of their self-titled debut and Contra, they’ve made an artform out of privileged angst. From the kid who can’t use an Oxford comma properly to the third-world backpacker whose “healthy sense of worth” compels him to tour a war-torn land, these former Ivy League students have frequently poked fun at naive rich kids with an empathetic tongue in cheek.

Most of this philosophising was done at an arm’s length away from the source of these existential woes. Just as you rarely see armed militia clothed in V-neck sweaters, I’d always assumed Vampire Weekend were too savvy to step into the moral quagmire themselves. They’ve already had enough grief levelled at them for being the ‘acceptable face of world music’, imagine the furore if they stopped for one second to write a song that’s not about something seemingly frivillous like bonking your ‘Cousins’.

‘Ya Hey’ is that song. Rather than dropping oblique reference points every third line, it sees Koenig adopt a magnificently blasphemous posture from start to finish. He is talking to Jehovah/The Almighty/The Big Cheese as the representative of a world of non-believers and hardened cynics. He is demanding to know, ‘When confronted with such global indifference and outright aggression, why you would not announce your existence with absolute certainty?’

Anyone who’s lost faith in religion will have posed this question before. When all was well in my life, bar a series of facial eruptions to rival Mount Vesuvius, it didn’t bother me that I’d never witnessed a shining white light and a voice booming with thespian wisdom. That would arrive in my hour of need, at a moment that required more than biblical vagaries like “I am that I am.”

The truly upsetting brilliance of ‘Ya Hey’ is that it recognises this moment will never come. It’s not in God’s nature to announce himself like that. Despite having created Zion, Babylon and the rest of world, he will watch it fall apart without staging an intervention. He will leave you strung out on a hospital bed, incandescent with fear and anger, regardless of what you might consequently think of him.

“Who could ever live that way?” ponders a disarmingly sympathetic Koenig.

His God is human like mine but he’s pitiful, not negligent; powerless not almighty. He’s as feckless as I was after being hooked up to an intravenous drip and pumped full of toxins. Cursed to stare upon a vast expanse of suffering and hope that a pop band from New York City might express the caring sentiment he’s personally unable to.

Strip away the theological context from ‘Ya Hey’ and it's worth remembering that a pop song sits at its core. A righteous swirl of drums, bass, plaintive piano, shrill vocoder and gospel chanting. Of course, there’s gospel chanting.

I wholeheartedly believe that this euphoric cocktail would amount to one of Vampire Weekend’s best tracks, even if its transcendental vision was masked by tangential shout outs to luxury designer brands or ex-members of Genesis. Then again, if this was the case, I wouldn’t have welled up the first time I heard the song. It wouldn’t have dredged up so many long-forgotten memories and I wouldn’t have felt this experience was all I could write about. Ultimately, it wouldn’t have meant so much to me.

Thank you Vampire Weekend and thank you for reading.

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Op donderdag 9 mei 2013 17:35 schreef Slobeend het volgende:

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Ik ben ook nog niet overtuigd. Het sprankelende van de vorige albums mis ik een beetje.

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Op donderdag 9 mei 2013 19:16 schreef Norrage het volgende:

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Ik vond ze altijd wel veels te hipster/alternatief. Ik vond het wel een beetje pretensieus leuke muziek, beetje geforceerd. Daarom vind ik die nieuwe wel leuk, omdat het volwassener klinkt