Back from the dead: me and Vampire Weekend

Wow! What a bum I've been. It's been, what.. three weeks since my last post? I had all intentions of writing some, first around the holidays and then after New Years, but the first truth of the matter is that I had no new stuff to share. The second truth? I've just plain been lazy as hell.

But to my defense, I was doin a little bit of this:


And a little bit of this:

Some of this:


And a little bit more of this:

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Also, thanks to a couple friends and a couple of hours on a Thursday night, I'm now solidly hooked on what many have been touting as the greatest show on HBO, now that Sopranos and Six Feet Under are done. I liken The Wire to a ghetto black Sopranos with a little more Law thrown in. It shows police corruption, police brutality, drugs, drugs, junkies, strippers, dealers, guns, Black gangstas, Greek gankstoirs, Polish gangsterskis, corrupt port authority, murders, beatings, strippers, lesbian cops, drugs, and every other word out of some idiot's mouth is fuck. It's got all the making of a great HBO show. And I've been known to sit in front of my large computer monitor for six hours, watching half a season's worth in one sitting. A clip here.

Download Tom Waits "Way Down in the Hole", The Wire theme from season two.

Now back to the music.


I don't know how Vampire Weekend [from where? Brooklyn, where else] slipped through the cracks in my world last year. I picked up a couple tracks late in the year, but somehow they managed to be swept away with a bunch of other stuff. "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" is catchy and different but not crazy. Every time I hear it, which has been a lot lately, I hear Simon & Garfunkel. I can't put my finger on that, but I can't shake it, either.

Their self-titled album, to come out on the 29th, is short and sweet. It's the first great release of 2008 [to actually be released in 2008 and not leaked months earlier, like the awesome Bodies of Water and White Denim albums]. And while the video for the first single, "A-Punk" may look like an Ok Go! video, but VP's sound goes way wider and deeper than the Chitown-bred JC Penney-fed popsters.



Download Vampire Weekend, from the forthcoming Vampire Weekend.
"Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa"
"Mansard Roof"
"A-Punk"
"Oxford Comma"

And those are just the first four tracks of the album!
Go download four more VP tracks-- two non-album-- from the Daytrotter sessions.
Pre-order the album from Insound.
Get the "Mansard Roof" single + b-side from iTunes.

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