60 Songs That Explain the '90s
Original podcast
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
14,276 words · 8 speakers
If you had to pick just one album to define the 21st century so far, what would it be? I'm Cole Kushner from Dissect.
And I'm Charles Holmes from the Midnight Boys. And on Tuesday, July 29th, Cole and I are launching season four of Last Song Standing, but this year, we're mixing things up.
Instead of searching for an artist's greatest song, we're asking an even bigger question. What is the greatest album of the 21st century so far? Listen to Last Song Standing on the Dissect podcast feed or the Dissect YouTube channel, starting Tuesday, July 29th.
Hello, friends. Just a quick announcement before we kick off today. The announcement is that 60 Songs is going on break for a period of two months or so, two months or less, I'm pretty sure. This is our regularly scheduled time off, every 15 episodes, just to give everyone a quick respite, to give our producers especially, a much-needed break from my whole thing. You can find me on Instagram, Blue Sky, and less often, Twitter, and I will update you there with specifics as we get them. But just know that we will miss you all terribly, and we will return rejuvenated very shortly. See you soon. Thanks.
I'm pro Football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carry sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit mddallies.com to watch my story.
Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.
I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta, lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.
Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.
Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.
This episode is brought to you by The Home Depot. The Home Depot has everything you need to launch your holiday season in style. Upgrade your yard with this year's hottest holiday decor, including the show-stopping Towering Santa. Oh, I like that one. And his impressive reindeer, both 8.5 feet and both designed with incredible detail that stands out day or night. When you want decor that delivers impact, The Home Depot has it. Make your home Santa's favorite stop with the holiday decor you want, all waiting for you at The Home Depot.
We don't talk enough about how cool I used to be.
So now we've come to the part of the night where the Dirty Projectors and Bjork perform.
That was me, just now, going "woo" in the background there. No, it wasn't. Of course, that wasn't me. I would never go "woo" at such a rare and prestigious event. That's not cool, but I was there the night of May 8, 2009, at Housing Works. That's a cool bookstore in SoHo. That's a cool neighborhood in Manhattan, when the Dirty Projectors, that's a cool rock band, performed live with Bjork, that's Bjork, on a suite of extremely cool tunes about whale-watching from a mountain in northern California. The guy handling the introductions here...
That's author and show promoter and cool website guru Brandon Stosey. He also published a great book about crying in public. Brandon's really cool. These tunes were eventually released in 2011 on a Dirty Projectors and Bjork Studio EP called Mount Wittenberg Orca. But to paraphrase Pee Wee Herman, "I don't have to listen to it, Dottie. I lived it."
The curvy knows where you are going.
I'm in love with no intention.
And I'll say, first of all, that the experience of standing physically, what, 70 feet from Bjork onstage? When she hits one of those patented incomprehensibly rad, super Bjork vocal swoops, like on the word "where" just now. "The curvy knows where you are going." That is an absurdly life-changingly cool moment. That is a thunderbolt straight down your spine. Second of all, is this fucking guy gonna go "woo" the whole time? Like, is he gonna be carrying on in this manner the whole time Bjork is singing 70 feet away from us onstage in a bookstore?
He better not. Matter of fact, no, he ain't. And I'll tell you why. The coolest thing about live recordings is the little nuances, right? The ambient noises, the shuffling, the muttering, the imperfections, the sense of reverent people gathered in a room together. And so halfway through this song, if you listen very closely, you can hear me personally grab the "woo" guy and DDT him into the Housing Works Cookbook section. A DDT is a devastating pro wrestling move that I can definitely do. And I certainly can describe it to you, like, logistically. I just choose not to do that. It's very low in the mix.
But if you concentrate, you can hear a faint "boof" right here as I heroically waylay this clown. Shut up.
It's in there somewhere. Trust me. I'm just kidding. Obviously Housing Works is way too cool to have a cookbook section. Hey, did I ever tell you that I lived in New York City in the mid to late 2000s? And I got to be the uncoolest person in the room for some cool stuff? There's me skulking around the extreme periphery of Housing Works, pressed up against the bookshelves way in the back because I am tall and I am deathly afraid of blocking somebody's view of Bjork and getting clonked on the head with a cookbook. You know what I'm doing back there? Actually, I remember this. The joint is packed, right? And so I'm pressed up against the back wall of the bookstore
and I'm in the fiction section shelved alphabetically. And I'm standing near the Cs, all the letter C authors. And I start pulling out Tom Clancy books and reading just the last few sentences in every Tom Clancy book. I don't know why I'm doing this. You know, Tom Clancy, he wrote The Hunt for Red October and several dozen other like uber dad books, Reagan era military thrillers, Jack Ryan. That's Tom Clancy's famous character. Jack Ryan, who knows a lot about World War II and gets to beat up a bunch of terrorists like patriotically. There's a Jack Ryan TV show on Amazon Prime now where John Krasinski plays Jack Ryan.
And in season two, he personally punches the president of Venezuela in the face. If that's not exactly true, I don't care. I just start pulling out Tom Clancy books, flipping to the last page and reading the endings aloud. I'm doing this as a bit, I guess, to amuse my rock critic friends between opening acts, to burn off some nervous energy. I was young, okay? Okay, I was 30, which sure seemed old at the time, but it sure seems young now. Tom Clancy, The Cardinal of the Kremlin, 1988. Last page, quote.
"One way or another, we all fight for the things we believe in. Doesn't that give us some common ground?" Jack asked. He walked off to his car, leaving Darmatov with the thought. Meanwhile...
Apparently, everybody at this Dirty Projectors and Bjork show is whooping the whole time. Ridiculous. What kind of way is that to behave? Act like you've been there before. David Byrne is in this room. MIA is in this room. Haley Joel Osment, star of The Sixth Sense and later Happy Gilmore 2, that guy, that kid, whatever, he's apparently in this room. Bjork is on that stage. Am I the only person in this room who truly grasps the importance, the solemnity, the gravity of this event?
Tom Clancy, The Sum of All Fears, 1990, last page, quote, "Killed enough? Ryan slid the sword back into its sheath and let it fall to his side." Yes, your highness, I think we all have.
My one remotely concrete rock critic-type thought, as I watch this show, is that I like to imagine that the Dirty Projectors are singing in binary code, like their exceedingly cool staccato choral yelping complimentary sounds like binary code, except instead of zeros and ones, it's ah, ah, ah, ah, and eh, eh, eh, eh. That's all I got, in terms of like, analysis. Did I blog this show? I bet I did. Ugh. I am afraid to go find out if I blogged this. Never mind. Forget I asked.
Tom Clancy, Executive Orders, 1999, last page, quote, "Thank you, Mr. President."
We're building up to the huge cataclysmic emotional climax here, where Bjork and the whale lock eyes and intensely vibe with each other and come to a profound metaphysical understanding. Meanwhile, why am I still doing this? Tom Clancy, "The Bear and the Dragon," 2000. Last page. Quote, "For one particular person in Beijing, the changes meant that her job would change somewhat in importance, if not in actual duties. Ming went out to dinner, the restaurants hadn't closed, with her foreign lover, gushing over drinks and noodles with the extraordinary events of the day, then walked off to his apartment for a dessert of Japanese sausage."
End quote. Yo!
"We looked in each other's eyes and realized that we are only one," sings Bjork to the whale, or Bjork sings that about the whale to us. So occasionally in this era, I get to go to these cool shows in New York City, shows that radiate a palpable cultural significance, shows that will be blogged, possibly by me and definitely by others, shows that will be attended by people you may have heard of and perhaps even admire. Maybe it's me blocking your view of Bjork, or maybe it's Questlove blocking your view, or Taeyeon Day Braxton, the dude from that cool rock band Battles? I love that band. Maybe it's him blocking your view. He's tall.
In my experience, anyway, going to these shows, you just get a vague, satisfying, but also weirdly intimidating sense that you're in the thick of it. You are present physically for an Occasion of moderate societal impact. There is Brooklyn, the idea, right? The amorphous, fantastical, cliched, deified and/or derided, quote unquote indie rockin', quote unquote hipster playground that exists primarily on the internet. And there is Brooklyn, the physical location where one might live and walk dogs and drink coffee and attend concerts. And sometimes you find yourself at a show so radiant with greatness and coolness
that it feels like you're in the real Brooklyn and the internet Brooklyn simultaneously. Actually, we're in Soho. Bjork's in Soho. We're all watching Bjork in Soho, but this feels spiritually like a Brooklyn thing. And a major topic here today is Manhattan's valiant attempt to wrest the crown of zeitgeist-defining coolness back from Brooklyn. Listen, I got a lot on my mind and I ain't never seen Bjork live before in a venue of any size. And I'm freaking out a little bit and we all got our weird defense mechanisms. Tom Clancy, "The Hunt for Red October, 1984." Quote, "Ryan missed the dawn.
He boarded a TWA 747 that left Dulles on time at 7:05 a.m. The sky was overcast and when the aircraft burst through the cloud layer into sunlight, Ryan did something he had never done before. For the first time in his life, Jack Ryan fell asleep on an airplane."
Thank you. And then we all whooped at Bjork and the Dirty Projectors some more and then it was over. Hey, great news, everybody. I did blog this show. Oh, thank God. I blogged about this show for The Village Voice and apparently I got paid by the adjective. Sheesh, that's a weird payment system. I mentioned Haley Joel Osment in this blog and I honestly can't tell if I'm joking. I don't know if I physically saw him there or if I'm just using Haley Joel Osment as an example of the sort of celebrity you might have seen there. That's a good sign, right? When you blog a blog so oblique that even you can't tell if you're joking? That's fantastic.
You may be asking, how did I find time to be fully present and maintain a rock critic type of laser focus and take careful, lucid, insightful, handwritten notes for my little blog during this Bjork and Dirty Projectors deal? If I'm also way in the back flipping through the hunt for Red October, how could I possibly goof around the whole time but later generate an attentive and incisive piece of online music criticism? Well, I'm afraid you've somehow both under and overestimated my professionalism. Hell yeah, I can multitask. Hell yeah, I can read excerpts from the cardinal of the Kremlin aloud to my rock critic buddies
during all the opening acts. And then later, when I'm writing, I can be like, after a hushed, plaintive opening set from Google, Google, Google, Google, Google. This blog of mine does remind me that after the Housing Works show, I went to the Bjork and Dirty Projectors after-party, which took place at Cooper Square Hotel, a super fancy hotel in the East Village. Either this hotel is called the standard now, or it was always called the standard and I misidentified it as the Cooper Square Hotel. I'm getting paid by the adjective. I'm not getting paid by the fact. All right? All I can tell you about this hotel, according to my blog, is that it's absurdly oversized, overextravagant, lovely and vertiginous.
That'll be $4. Anyway, Bjork DJed the after-party and played "Trill" by The Clips.
Okay, and this also is a surreal, absurd, life-changing, thunderbolt-type moment. Watching Bjork behind the decks, or whatever, and she's bouncing around joyously and going, "Bitch, I'm trill. Bitch, I'm so trill." Everybody was into the clips in 2009, trust me. Even the whales were blogging about the clips in 2009. In my little blog from this event, I wrote that Bjork DJ'd this after-party, but I put "DJ'd" in scare quotes? That's rude. What? Hey, calm down, Lester Bangs, but I was there. I spent nearly five years being there.
I spent nearly five years living in both Brooklyn, the mythical sociocultural internet idea, and Brooklyn, the literal, physical place. I arrived there in 2006, proudly and skittishly serving as music editor at The Village Voice, a beloved cultural institution recently acquired by a polarizing national chain of alt-weeklies as part of a spiritual hostile corporate takeover, and the out-of-town dickish, spiritual hostile takeover guys had fired the previous beloved Village Voice music editor and hired me instead, who didn't even live in New York yet, and they installed me there in the beloved guy's place. So at
first, anyway, everyone at the paper justifiably hated me. I arrived in New York City in 2006, and I'd missed it. I was so worried I'd missed it. New York City was so cool for so long, but by 2006, it wasn't cool anymore, and I'd missed it. That's what you do when you move to New York. You move there, you move all your shit into your place, and you wake up that first morning. Do you even have a bed yet? Or is it just a mattress on the floor? And you walk out your front door, or you climb out of your manhole, or whatever your real estate situation is, and there it is, New York City, the place you live now. And you take a deep breath.
And you exhale and you say out loud, I missed it. Because you did. Everyone thinks they missed it and everyone's right, but also everyone's wrong. So in the early 2000s, I'm living in Ohio and I'm reading about how rock is back and New York City is back. I'm reading about the Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol and LCD Sound System and TV on the radio. And it all sounds so amazing, so revolutionary, so paralyzingly cool, so legitimately life-changing. And I finally get to New York City in 2006 and it's over. I missed it. I can still see the Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol and LCD Sound System and TV on the radio, and
I do. But I see them now at, say, a huge, famous uptown venue like Radio City Music Hall and not at a tiny, cool, underground-ish venue like, say, the Mercury Lounge on the Lower East Side. I missed the exhilarating ascent, the underground cool years, the our little secret because we live in New York years. These bands are still great, but they're not mine. To the extent that any art generated in this city can ever be said to be mine. I missed it. If you ever moved to New York, you missed it. Even if you were born there,
you missed it. Babies born in New York City, the baby, you know, comes out of the womb, the baby says, "I missed it," out loud, audibly, and then the baby starts crying and doesn't talk again for months. Everyone from anywhere at any time missed it. But you take that first deep breath as a person living in New York City and you say, "I missed it," out loud, and then you get on with it. Whatever you're doing or trying to do, and inevitably, a cool new band will emerge to provide the soundtrack to you trying to do whatever you're doing. And to the extent that you can say this about any art generated in New York
City ever, maybe right now, this cool new band can be yours.
In January 2010, the New York City rock band Vampire Weekend released their second album called Contra. It will debut at number one on the Billboard Album Chart. This song is called "White Sky." And first of all, to me, this song beautifully evokes just the feeling of walking around New York City. The awe, but also the intimidation, but also the palpable, studied indifference of a person who walks around New York City all the time because they live in New York City and it's not cool anymore, so play it cool. So the first line there. "An ancient business, a modern piece of glasswork. Down on the corner that you walk each day in passing. You are living and working and walking and daydreaming
and perhaps blogging in the city that created culturally both the past as you understand it and the future as you imagine it." In the sheer peppiness of this particular Vampire Weekend song, and also pretty much every other Vampire Weekend song, the quick lift, little Afro-pop bounce to "White Sky" personifies both the spring in my step as I walk the streets of New York—I'm not very cool—and the chaotic, manic, way-too-fast stream of consciousness, semi-intrusive thoughts, bashing around my skull at all times as I walk the streets of New York. Alas, I have no outlet for these random, chaotic thoughts in 2010
because the podcast hasn't been invented yet to accommodate me.
The podcast had for sure been invented by 2010, I assume. My published blogs aren't necessarily accurate. What makes you think my racing intrusive thoughts are accurate? Living in New York City and watching yourself as you live in New York City, tending to the pointless internal monologue one generates whilst living in New York City, these lines encapsulate that for me. A little stairway, a little piece of carpet, a pair of mirrors that are facing one another, out in both directions, a thousand little Julias that come together in the middle of Manhattan. There are eight million stories in the naked city. And if you're narcissistic enough, all of them can be about you.
Manhattan can be populated exclusively by eight million reflections of you. Hey, did I mention that I saw Vampire Weekend live? The week the Contra album came out at the United Palace Theater in Washington Heights? That's a cool neighborhood in Manhattan.
And my only concrete memory of this show really is Vampire Weekend bassist Chris Baio bouncing around on stage as the band opened with this song, "White Sky." I thought to myself, the bassist is having so much fun up there. Good for him. Also, the Contra album cover was blown up real huge and projected behind the band. The blonde lady with the polo shirt staring intriguingly at the camera. The polo logo almost looks like a superfluous apostrophe between the R and the A in the word Contra. That lady would later sue Vampire Weekend, claiming they didn't get permission to use that photograph, and they'd settle out of court. It was a whole fiasco that I probably blogged about several times.
But nonetheless, fantastic album cover, truly. Meanwhile, lyrically, white sky. Sky is still really, really, really doing it for me. Around the corner, the house that modern art built. A house for modern art to keep it out the closets. The people who might own it, the sins of pride and envy. And on the second floor, the Richard Sarah Skate Park. Vampire Weekend will spend at least the first several years of their career serving as a weird, intense flashpoint in various internet-born rock critic debates about race and class. Debates about privilege and appropriation. Debates about rich people poisoning art.
Debates about how one even defines the term "rich people" or the word "poisoning" or the word "art." But part of what's maddening about Vampire Weekend, to the critics who find this band maddening, is that Vampire Weekend are themselves constantly having that debate. This band is constantly, thoughtfully, working through those ideas, both in their interviews and in their songs. And so, "super rich people owning priceless works of art." "Owning" in scare quotes and "owning" literally. That plain fact, that abstract idea, that moral atrocity of anyone owning art at this scale, that's all part of this song, White Sky, as well.
"The people who might own it, the sins of pride and envy." And the last line there, "and on the second floor, the Richard Sarah Skate Park." You can fall down the rabbit hole of what that means precisely. Richard Sarah, the extremely famous sculptor, famous for these huge installations, these giant gorgeous, awe-inspiring, intimidating, and vaguely ridiculous monoliths of steel, et cetera. Did Richard Sarah open a skate park? Or did trespassing punk skateboarders turn one of his installations into a skate park? Why is it on the second floor? You can spend a couple hours mulling all that over.
Or you can just vibe, man, to the melodiousness of this song. The jovial charisma, the perfect pop song frivolity of it all. Because whether you love Vampire Weekend or hate them, any depth you project onto these songs will be equaled, will be countered by the care and the thought, and yes, the depth that Vampire Weekend used to create these songs in the first place.
Look up at the buildings, imagine who might live there. Imagining your Walfords and a ball upon the sink there. There's that awe and the intimidation and the pedestrian daydreaming again. Also, do you know what Walfords are? I didn't. They're tights, apparently. I thought they were shoes. I just assumed they were shoes because anytime I encounter an unfamiliar proper noun in a Vampire Weekend song, I just assume they're singing about shoes. Because sometimes they are. This band is mine. I am claiming this band as mine because they emerged from New York City whilst I personally was living in New York City. That's how the city works.
If you recently moved in New York City, congratulations. And also, I'm sorry to inform you that you missed it, but I was there. Couple of months ago, I was at another show in Columbus, Ohio. I live in Ohio again. Ohio is cool now. I took my sons, 14 and 11 years old. I took my sons to their first big concert. I bought them pizza and Gatorade. This is an outdoor show, an amphitheater with a big open lawn section. We got there too late to get decent seats, but some kind-hearted friends squeezed us in. But even then, my kids are a little too short to have clear sightlines, so my 11-year-old is sneaking into the aisle periodically because he can't quite see over the dude standing in front of him. The concert starts.
My kids are vibing. I make the kids wear earplugs and they don't wanna, but then when they find out how loud the music is, they're grateful for the earplugs because I know what I'm talking about. Dad knows what he's doing. And halfway through the show, my younger son's gotta use the bathroom, so we walk up the lawn to the bathroom at the back of the venue. And as we reemerge, right at the moment when we can once again see the stage, see the band onstage. As we walk back down to our spots, the band launches into the one of their first big hit songs. And my son and I get to have this nice little entrance music hero moment. Because my kids are carrying on a proud family tradition. Now my kids can say, I was there too.
My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 30th episode of 60 Songs That Explained the 90s, Cole and the 2000s. And this week, we are discussing "A Punk" by Vampire Weekend. From the first Vampire Weekend album, released in 2008 and called Vampire Weekend. A hyphen punk. This song is soundtracked. This song has appeared in advertisements for HP printers and, more recently, Dick's Sporting Goods. I don't mean that as a criticism. Personally, I got no problem with advertising.
This episode is brought to you by Boar's Head. You know what I love about football season? It's the football, but also the football watching food. And nothing hits like a Boar's Head sandwich when I'm watching a game. Really, any game day sandwich better with Boar's Head. Philly cheesesteak, layer up buttery slider rolls with Boar's Head London broil roast beef, American white cheese and picante provolone. Delicious. Then add roasted onions, peppers and Boar's Head pub style horseradish sauce. I love horseradish. And you've got the ultimate game day cheesesteak. They've also got a whole lineup of premium meats, cheeses, hummus and dips, condiments and more to serve up on game day. Head to your local Boar's Head deli counter to shop now. For game day sandwich inspiration and more, visit boar'shead.com. Boar's Head, committed to craft since 1905.
This episode is brought to you by Panda Express. Telling someone you love them, it isn't always easy, but showing them through food? Sometimes that's better than words, especially when that food's what cooked at Panda Express, a Joe House favorite. Pick from delicious classics like orange chicken, honey walnut shrimp, kung pow chicken and black pepper sirloin steak. Perfect for when you're watching the team you love or eating with the person you love. Have you eaten yet? Click or tap the banner to order or visit a Panda Express near you.
This episode is brought to by Viori. When it comes to clothes that score high in both comfort and style, Viori is my MVP. Sunday performance joggers, oh yeah. They have the perfect, I could watch a game and then go out to dinner vibe. And the Meta pant, that's my number one, I need to look like I tried option. Get 20% off your first purchase at Viori.com/Simmons and discover the versatility of Viori clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions.
See? I love advertising. Can I please play you my all time favorite song by the cool Brooklyn rock band Grizzly Bear?
Take on another shift. Paws in the middle, hands in the middle.
This band is mine also. From their third album, released in 2009 and called Vecetamist. This is a Grizzly Bear song called Foreground. Last song on the album. Grizzly Bear specialize in elegant and achingly beautiful choral art rock type jams. They sound like the whales with whom Bjork is vibing. I remember so vividly hearing this song live, but this memory is somehow both tremendously vivid and incredibly vague. I don't know where this show was, or when, or who else was there, or what else happened. I just remember this song, Foreground, performed in near darkness and absolute reverent silence.
I vaguely recall four long poles, vertical poles onstage with the lamps on them. And those lights were super dim for this whole song and possibly extinguished altogether. But I could be imagining this. Googling like Grizzly Bear stage lighting, or really anything Grizzly Bear related, only brings up photos of actual grizzly bears, like the animals. It's a suboptimal band name, Grizzly Bear, SEO wise. You gotta name your band something totally random and silly and unforgettable and ungoogled. For any other purpose, like Vampire Weekend. But so Grizzly Bear's doing this song foreground and the lights are way down and the crowds absolutely silent. Time is standing still.
Every hair on my arms is standing up and we're all just locked in to Grizzly Bear singer Ed Droste's voice. Even in this version of this song, the studio version, the studio version you are hearing in 10 second clips on some guy's podcast, it's still so startling, right? The tremendous intimacy, the opulent vehemence of his voice. For all you know, I'm still getting paid by the adjective.
It does not matter to me, one iota, what Ed Droste is singing here, by the way, like the words, I don't know any of the lyrics to this song and I don't care. And I hope Ed would understand and would take that as the enormous compliment I intended to be. It's all in the bracing tone and atmosphere here. The super simple piano recital piano riff, the stark sumptuousness of Ed's voice, the overwhelming quiet, the overwhelming calm of foreground. It is trance like, it is transportive. It is a universe unto itself. It is a Brooklyn of the mind and of the soul.
Grizzly Bear's got a ton of great songs, but only one of them is this one.
I love that simple drum beat starting to kick in right there.
This song is phenomenal, but beautifully and patiently sung chamber pop of this gravity and density, this would not appear to be party music, let alone pool party music, but our friends Jay-Z and Beyonce would disagree.
Okay, this is audio from the very famous video of Jay-Z and Beyonce watching Grizzly Bear play a giant free outdoor show, a pool party spiritually, if not literally, at the Williamsburg waterfront in 2009. Grizzly Bear are playing another song from their Vecitimist album called Ready Able. Ready, comma, Able. This is the most blogged video in music blog history. It is a 46-second amateur creep shot video, and it is, without question, the ugliest visual composition of our young century. Go look at this thing again sometime.
It's disturbing. It's hilarious. Jay-Z and Beyonce are standing in the VIP section near this grubby little VIP tent, just a little tarp roof sort of deal. They're surrounded by lots of people remarkably. They don't have like a popemobile or anything. And this video is shot surreptitiously from just a few people behind them. And you see the back of Jay-Z's head. He's wearing sunglasses. And you see him turning to his right to talk to Beyonce, who's holding a plastic cup of wine. And she's standing a few steps higher than him. So her head is cut off by the VIP tent. And beyond them, you see the band. You see Grizzly Bear onstage, also mostly with their heads cut off by the VIP tent.
It's surreal. It's macabre. Every time I go back to this video, it takes me 10 full seconds to even figure out what I'm looking at. I understand that this footage is shot like this because if the camera person were to attempt to get a decent and unobstructed angle of Jay-Z and Beyonce, that camera person would immediately be shot with a bow and arrow, or perhaps a cannonball, or whatever Jay-Z and Beyonce's security deal is working with. Nonetheless, this video looks ridiculous and yet is of tremendous cultural importance. Here's the Grizzly Bear song that probably convinced them
to come check this shit out in the first place.
I forgot how weird this song's video is. This song is called "Two Weeks." It's off Grizzly Bear's "Vecotumist" record. This is the band's signature song and biggest hit. And I am mildly surprised to learn that "Two Weeks" didn't chart on the Hot 100, but the "Vecotumist" record hit number eight on the Billboard Album Chart. This is a top 10 pop album. But improbably and impressively, it's pop on Grizzly Bear's terms. Grizzly Bear's music is a lavish cathedral surrounded by modest yurts. And Grizzly Bear's uncompromising ascent is indicative, if I may be so bold, of a legit indie rock movement.
So in 2006, a scrappy local promotion outfit called Jelly NYC starts doing free outdoor summer concerts at McCarran Park Pool in the abandoned and drained Olympic-sized pool there. In 2009, they move over to the Williamsburg waterfront, and that venue is less cool. And by 2010, it's all over, but you know, nothing gold can stay. Featured artists include The Dirty Projectors, The Hold Steady, Beach House, MGMT, Superchunk, et cetera, et cetera. We're talking 5,000 people officially and possibly way more than that unofficially. We're talking dodgeball, we're talking basketball, we're talking giant slip and slides,
we're talking mini pancakes for sale for $5. We're talking every hipster joke you've ever heard in your life made flesh. I just read a great oral history of these parties on a Substack called "We'll Have to Pass." And apparently, at the MGMT show, somebody found a purse that somebody else had pooped in. Make of that what you will. I think it's gross. I saw Fucked Up and Mission of Burma at the Williamsburg waterfront, two fantastic punk adjacent bands who started up in two different decades. Another time I saw DMC, as in Run DMC. I don't do slip and slides, though. That is both beneath my dignity and beyond my physical ability. But yeah,
Jay-Z and Beyonce and Solange went and saw Grizzly Bear and the footage became the Zap Rudor film of the late 2000s music blogosphere. And the next day Jay-Z does an interview with MTV and they ask him about Grizzly Bear and Jay-Z says, quote, "What the indie rock movement is doing right now is very inspiring," end quote. And usually I just leave it at that because that's honestly very funny to me. Jay-Z saying, "What the indie rock movement is doing right now is very inspiring." That's objectively amusing. But I just went back and reread his full quote and it would appear, not for the first time and probably not for
the last time either, it appears that I have done Jay-Z a disservice because what he says in full is really perceptive and fascinating. Jay-Z calls Grizzly Bear an incredible band. Then he says, quote, "The thing I want to say to everyone, I hope this happens because it will push rap, it will push hip hop to go even further. What the indie rock movement is doing right now is very inspiring. It felt like us in the beginning. These concerts, they're not on the radio. No one hears about them. And there's 12,000 people in attendance. And the music that they're making and the connection they're making to people is really
inspiring. So I hope that they have a run where they push hip hop back a little bit. So it will force hip hop to fight to make better music because it can happen." Because that's what rap did to rock. When rock was the dominant force in music, rap came and said, y'all got to sit down for a minute. This is our time and we've had a stranglehold on music since then. So I hope indie rock pushes rap back a bit because it will force people to make great music for the sake of making great music. End quote. What Jay-Z wants is a worthy adversary. Genre wise.
Jay-Z has observed correctly that here in 2009, hip hop broadly has dominated popular music, both chart wise and influence wise for a solid decade now. Two solid decades. When's the last time rock of any sort was the consistently commercially and culturally dominant style of popular music? Nirvana's Nevermind in 1991? Green Day's Dookie in 1994? Linkin Park? Let's not get into it, but deep into the 2000s, certainly there's no contest, even when the Strokes are at their absolute apex, even when rock is back and New York is back and rock and roll is cool again. The Strokes do not have a number one record.
The Strokes do not have a number one song. The Strokes, in fact, have exactly one song that ever charted on the Billboard Hot 100, and that would be their 2005 song Juice Box, which charted for exactly one week at number 98. But now Jay-Z's standing in the Williamsburg waterfront VIP tent in 2009, vibing intensely to Grizzly Bear amongst many thousands of young people who are rollicking down slip and slides and pooping in one another's handbags and so forth. And Jay-Z wonders if indie rock, quote unquote, can finally challenge hip hop's cultural supremacy,
if only to give hip hop some fresh motivation. And that ain't gonna happen. Honestly, or it ain't gonna happen at Jay-Z's preferred scale. Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, Animal Collective, et cetera. This late 2000s era of huge Brooklyn diaspora bands. These are beloved, groundbreaking, important, enduring artists, but they're not cover of Spin Magazine bands. They're not number one album bands. They're not Saturday Night Live bands. But who is anymore, really?
And here we have Vampire Weekend, a spry young quartet from Columbia University, debuting in 2007 with a handful of bizarrely and instantly phenomenal Ivy League Afro-pop songs available on the internet, most notably this one called Oxford comma. Vampire Weekend, all right, we got Ezra Koenig on lead vocals and guitar primarily. We got Rostam Batmanglidge on various keyboards and drums and whatnot. Plus, he's the producer. We got Chris Baio on bass. We got Chris Thompson on drums. Rostam will exit after the band's third album, 2013's Modern Vampires of the City,
to focus on his own solo and production work, though he'll still contribute to Vampire Weekend occasionally. Otherwise Vampire Weekend's core lineup will hold. Forgive me, but the "who gives a fuck" in the opening line, "who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma," is tremendously important. The crudeness amidst the sophistication, the swagger amidst the stylish stuffiness. The "who gives a fuck" is like when the cool substitute teacher flips their chair around and sits on it backward, right? Except it's the actual cool version of that. If you love this song, you love this song instantly. You love this song within 30 seconds. If you are of the disposition to hate this song...
Too peppy, too jaunty, too clever, too twee, too moneyed. If you hate this song, you hate it within 30 seconds. But Oxford comma imprints itself on you instantly. All of Vampire Weekend's songs do. From the beginning, there is a rampant, brazen, relentless catchiness to these songs that you can accept or reject, but you cannot ignore. In 2019, I wrote a long future for The Ringer, looking back at Vampire Weekend's early years, talking to fellow rock critics who loved them and fellow rock critics who kinda maybe hated them. And the great Charles Aaron, who was Spin Magazine's music editor at the time, Charles
says, quote, "People I know who don't follow new bands, they would hear one Vampire Weekend song and just be like, what's that? That's catchy as shit. Who are those guys?" And then they'd hear who they were and they'd be annoyed.
Charles Aaron was one of my absolute favorite people I met in New York City, and I hope he is well. And what you hear on this song, Oxford comma, the jolly little keyboard riff, the compact and charming little crescendo of the chorus here, the jovial class warfare of lines like, "Why would you lie about how much coal you have?" What you hear on this song harmonizes alarmingly well with what you don't hear. You don't hear guitar distortion. You don't hear angst, self-loathing, or even melancholy. You don't hear an iota of 90s-type underground concern about selling out, or getting too
big too fast, or winding up on the wrong sort of TV shows, or ad campaigns, or magazine covers. You don't hear a concern with cool, the way cool usually manifests itself in hot new rock bands, the sort of cool synonymous with aggression, or danger, or reticence. You don't hear hesitation.
You don't hear philosophical hesitation and you don't hear musical or lyrical hesitation. Let me refer you here to a post from Ezra Koenig's pre-vampire weekend era blog, which was called "Internet Vibes," internetvibes.blogspot.com, it's still up. Let me refer you here to a post from Ezra Koenig's pre-vampire weekend era blog, which was called "Internet Vibes," internetvibes.blogspot.com, it's still up. Let me refer you to an internet vibes post from Saturday, February 11th, 2006, in which Ezra talks about his fascination with preppy clothes
and grapples with the broader idea of authenticity. Or really, he valiantly refuses to waste any time grappling with the idea of authenticity. Quote, "What is authentic for a guy like me? Fourth generation Ivy League, deracinated, American Jew, born on the Upper West Side, raised in New Jersey, to middle-class, post-hippie parents with semi Anglophiliic tendencies and a propensity to put on Eastern European accents and use obscure Yiddish phrases. The obvious answer is that I, like all of us, should be a truly post-modern consumer,
taking the bits and pieces I like from various traditions and cultures, letting my aesthetic instincts be my only guide. In fact, all of my friends, even the children of immigrants, seem to be in the same boat. We are both disconnected from and connected to everything. Now we've transcended mere clothes." End quote. He also says, and yeah, wow, this is a much more succinct way to put it. Quote, "Do not pop your collar if you don't sail." End quote. Ezra Koenig is about to sing the line, "Lil' John, he always tells the truth."
And whatever your personal knee-jerk reaction to that might be, you're gonna remember that reaction for the rest of your life.
And this is Vampire Weekend's most remarkable quality. This band's superpower, or the terrible source of this band's supervillany. They will shout out anybody. They will openly and confidently be inspired by anybody. They will let their aesthetic instincts be their guide. They will name their songs any old thing. This song, for example, and may the Lord not strike me down, please. This song is called Cape Cod Quassa Quassa.
Yeah, forgive me again, but the disconcertingly charming jauntiness with which Ezra Koenig sings the line, "Do you wanna fuck like you know I do?" The way the F-bomb as a verb flies out of his mouth. "Do you wanna fly?" The same way a toupee might fly off some poor guy's head while he's walking along the Hudson River in a stiff breeze. This guy singing "Do you wanna fly?" in that fashion is really something. Imagine any other popular rock band in history singing those words in that order. It sounds a lot different when you imagine like Stone Temple Pilots singing it.
The Jonas Brothers. I picked the Jonas Brothers at random. I don't know, dude. Cape Cod is a popular vacation spot in Massachusetts. Quassa Quassa is a dance style and a musical style originating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The phrase, the song title, Cape Cod Quassa Quassa. That's what? A joke? An affront? A provocation? With early Vampire Weekend especially, I keep wanting to say, and then I stop myself from saying, that early Vampire Weekend songs are trolling.
These four dudes from Columbia University describing their sound as Upper West Side Soweto on MySpace, one might reasonably characterize that as trolling. Soweto, that's a historically musically vital township in South Africa. The Upper West Side, that's a semi-cool neighborhood in Manhattan. But trolling implies insincerity. Trolling implies saying things you don't mean just to antagonize people. But when Vampire Weekend used the phrase Upper West Side Soweto, it's not that they don't mean it, because the phrase itself doesn't actually mean anything.
It's just two places in two different countries on two different continents getting bonked together the way a child might bonk two action figures together. But nonetheless, you get Vampire Weekend's intent in bonking these two locations, these two cultures together. You can imagine the sound of Upper West Side Soweto in your head even if you don't want to. Or really, you don't even have to imagine it, because this band unquestionably sounds like what that would sound like.
Meanwhile, that's the other thing. Speaking of provocations that are too sincere to qualify as trolling, it feels so unnatural, Peter Gabriel 2. Even before Vampire Weekend starts getting tons of press, and that happens pretty much immediately, even before that, Vampire Weekend are clearly, fully aware of how they will be described and to whom they will be compared. This band's sound is very 80s, very upbeat, very mass appeal, pop, very thoughtful, very worldly. Think sincere if a little touristy rock star's dabbling in global sounds. This means Peter Gabriel.
This means Sting, perhaps, in Sting's interminable lute phase. And this means, ah, yes, Paul Simon. I can't explain this, but even on the very first publicly available Vampire Weekend songs, Ezra Koenig sings like a guy who knows his band's debut album is gonna be compared to Paul Simon's Graceland like 500,000 times. And that Graceland comparison will be apt each of those 500,000 times. But that don't make it not funny. Vampire Weekend blows up immediately. Vampire Weekend's getting glowing reviews in the New York Times.
A live review written by the great critic and friend of the podcast, Kalifa Sane, before the band's played more than a handful of prominent shows. Vampire Weekend's on the cover of Spin Magazine before they even put a full album out. That cover story is written by The Ringer's own Andy Greenwald. And here is the funniest line in that story while Andy is interviewing Rostam. Quote, "He requests that a discussion about his love for Wes Anderson be kept off the record," end quote. Holy shit. Vampire Weekend perform on Saturday Night Live just a couple of months after their self-titled
debut album comes out in January 2008. The way Spin Magazine's Charles Aaron put it to me was, quote, "Things really broke right for them, but they're the kind of kids that things break right for."
I like this song just fine, but I'm gonna level with you and say that A-Punk has never been my favorite Vampire Weekend song. And maybe that's because I literally don't know any of these words. Or because this is not my favorite Vampire Weekend song, I've never bothered to learn any of the words. Or both. Joanna drove slowly into the city, the Hudson River all filled with snow. She spied the ring on his honor's finger. Oh, oh, oh. That is a nifty first verse, if I do say so myself. You get a vivid sense of place and a vivid sense of character. Multiple characters in four lines, and the fourth line is just, oh, oh, oh.
And while I maintain that oh, oh, oh is the most important and really only necessary part of A-Punk lyrically, especially the hyper-confident good cheer with which Ezra sings, oh, oh, oh, here on Saturday Night Live, having been introduced by Amy Adams, I do nonetheless greatly respect this song and the non-oh, oh, oh parts of this song. But I still got no idea what he's singing right here, other than it's something about a lily-white hand. Let's just assume he's singing about shoes.
(singing)
Oh, right. That's the other, other thing. The shoes, the clothes, the fashion, the preppiness, the button-down shirts, the sweaters, the suits, the staunch refusal to be a t-shirt-and-gines band. Rostam on SNL is wearing a genuinely majestic scarf. This scarf is glorious and also ginormous. It is a Lenny Kravitz-scale scarf, if that means anything to you, and I hope it does. In Lizzie Goodman's 2017 book, Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth in Rock and Roll in New York City. 2001 to 2011 Ezra says, quote, "When we first started getting press,
I felt the most excited when I'd see people describe the music as preppy, because I loved the fact that we were getting people to have synesthesia. It doesn't actually make any sense to describe music as preppy. But suddenly, people were describing it as if preppy had been a genre for the past 40 years. I especially loved it when people would describe us onstage and misidentify what we were wearing. They'd be like, taking the stage in sweaters and polo shirts on a night where nobody is wearing a sweater or polo shirt. I started to feel like, damn, we're really building something. We're getting people to see things."
End quote. I am not hallucinating Rostam's Lenny Kravitz scarf. I assure you, I do get why "A Punk" is the song from the first self-titled Vampire Weekend record that hit the hard disk. That opening guitar riff is extra immediately super catchy. That guitar sounds like a house party, like the kind of modest, run-of-the-mill collegiate house party Vampire Weekend were presumably playing at like 15 minutes ago, before everything broke right for them. "A Punk" is ostensibly a punk song. It is 2 minutes and 17 seconds long. It is suitable for pogoing or ollieing.
It sounds like the earworm jingle for the ubiquitous TV ads for the Richard Sarah Skate Park. But on SNL at least, it's a punk song with an honest-to-God string quartet breakdown in the middle of it.
And even here, in the first Vampire Weekend record's shortest and sweetest and simplest and least sociologically and musicologically freighted pop song, there is a breezy mix of high and low culture, a sense of styles, eras, worldviews, lifestyles clashing. It is wild to me now, truly, to think about how much discourse this band generated in 2008. Ivy League discourse, cultural appropriation discourse, a racial discourse. Talking to The Telegraph in 2010, Ezra says, quote, "When Obama came to power, there was a lot of talk about a post-racial America. It's something that we've had to think and talk about
a lot, even when people define us," as one writer did, "as the whitest band in the world, despite the specific ethnicities of our band," end quote. Rastam is Iranian-American, Ezra is of Hungarian-Jewish descent. And I personally read tens of thousands of words of that discourse, and I have contributed, directly or indirectly, many thousands of words myself, these words included. And yet, even when I'm deeply, happily mired in that discourse, my favorite part of A-Punk is still when they go, "A, A, A, A."
But yeah, this band drove some people up the wall. As the music editor at The Village Voice at the time, I made the bizarre and unnecessary, but also kind of heroic and sexy, decision to publish two reviews of the first Vampire Weekend record. One generally positive review, written by the great Mike Powell, and one generally negative review, written by the great Julianne Escobedo Shepherd. Just to clarify, I am extremely pro-Vampire Weekend and pro this first record especially. And my argument for the greatness of this record boils down to one line on one song. The song is called Campus. Of course it is. And this is the line.
Look, I understand genuinely why someone, why anyone would find this sort of thing annoying. Just the ease, the exceedingly collegiate insouciance of walk to class in front of ya, spill kefir on your kefia. The way he pronounces in front of ya, the way he bonks the words kefir and kefia together like more toys he just pulled out of the toy box. But in my experience, it makes you want to root for this guy. Even if he carries himself with the self-assurance of someone who doesn't need anybody else rooting for him. And maybe it's just the thrill I get from rooting for a winner.
Because Vampire Weekend comes the closest to embodying Jay-Z's ideal of the indie rock movement. I would not quite say Vampire Weekend pushes back against hip hop writ large or that indie rock threatens hip hop supremacy in any concrete way. But Vampire Weekend's second album, Contra, comes out in 2010 and hits number one on the Billboard album chart and gives this band what a lot of indie rock buzz bands never quite get, a sustainable career. A career varied and sustainable enough that I can take my teenage sons to see Vampire Weekend almost 20 years into that career.
And my sons can bop along politely to all the old stuff when really all they want to hear is one song.
My kids want to hear the Vampire Weekend song Harmony Hall. From their 2019 album, "Father of the Bride," this is now my favorite Vampire Weekend song, too. And what a relief it is to me, truly, that all my old Vampire Weekend knowledge, all the discourse, all the "I was there" arcana of my youth, my New York City years, all of that is kinda obsolete now, or at least besides the point to them. To my boys, this is a great song by a band they'd previously never heard of, and their lack of context doesn't matter. "Harmony Hall," as a song, seems to describe surviving in a world I am not exactly psyched to be leaving for my children, if you catch my drift.
But this song's fundamental sweetness, its bounciness, its hard-fought optimism, that is familiar to me, and even more useful to me now than it was back when this band was brand-new and I thought 30 was old.
Ezra doesn't sound as confident lately, I've noticed. But at my kids' behest, I have played "Harmony Hall" in the car 500,000 times or so. And that line, "I don't wanna live like this, but I don't wanna die," hits me every time. All I want now is for my kids to get to go off somewhere and revel in their own coolness and go somewhere where they can say, "I missed it, but also I was there 20, 30, 40, 50 years later." And in this hopefully-not-too-idealistic fantasy of mine, I cannot think of a better band to provide the soundtrack as I watch my kids pop their collars and set sail.
We are delighted to welcome Chris DeVille, a great Ohioan. He is the longtime managing editor at Stereogum and the author of the fantastic new book, "Such Great Heights: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion," out this coming Tuesday, I believe. Chris, welcome.
Rob, I'm so excited to get bleeped out for saying [BLEEP].
That's, you would be the first guest to ever get bleeped out and that would be a great honor and I would be delighted for you to receive that honor. It had never occurred to me that that might happen, but I'm glad it's you. I'm so glad it's you. This makes a lot of sense. Congratulations on the book. I would not read the colon into the title of just anyone's book, so I hope you take that as the honor that I intended to be.
Yeah, I feel very honored. Yes, thank you.
You don't have to say that. Okay, your book starts out in the 90s. I would say it spends most of its time in the 2000s, but it pushes deep into the 2010s as well. And so just to start off, where do you see Vampire Weekend into, in the overall arc of the indie rock explosion? Like, is it overstating it to see these guys as, you know, one of the high points, both commercially and, you know, critically?
I don't think that's overstating it at all. To me, their body of work is one of the strongest of their generation and, you know, like if you listen back to some music from the late 2000s, early 2010s, you can just kind of cringe, but their catalog holds up. And in terms of a commercial breakthrough, they were really in the culture. You know, their albums were debuting at number one. They had celebrities in their music videos and I always remember they presented an award to One Direction at the VMAs on the same night as the Miley Cyrus, Robin Thicke foam finger incident.
Oh, that's right. Yeah.
And Trap Lord in stores now. Yeah, so I think that just speaks to how they, speaks to how they fit into the book and the indie rock explosion that was really reaching its peak around the time they were blowing up. I feel like they were kind of the perfect band to capitalize on the blogs and the whole blog star making system, because, you know, they, they were like...
They were kind of pandering to hipsters in some ways, but at the same, like, the first song they ever released was a cover of Exit Music for Stereogum's OK Computer Tribute album, a fact that we at Stereogum like to point out. But at the same time, like, the kids at the, you know, the frat party who just wanted something lighthearted and upbeat, they're, you know, they're catering to them too. A punk is basically like a ska song. And I mean, like, as far as how they factor it, they factor into the book quite a bit, because like you said, the book goes well into the 2010s. And when you move through,
like, Contra and Modern Vampires, they become emblematic of this shift towards indie bands incorporating more of these explicitly non-rock elements into their songs. Like, I think about the synths and the samples on Run, or like, the dancehall beat on Diplomat's Sun, or doing a rap remix of Step. That was kind of the wave at the time. And then by the time you get to the aftermath of that album, Ezra is talking about how the idea of a rock band has become unfashionable, and they prefer to think of Vampire Weekend as a recording project. And so, yeah, they, they kind of are the arc of the book to a certain extent.
Right. And what I remember about them is they got so huge so fast, right? Like, there's always overnight successes. There are just bands that seem to come out of nowhere. But like, you know, getting reviewed in the New York Times, you know, off like a couple songs available on the internet. They're on the cover of Spin before the album's out. They're on SNL right after the album's out. As you say, is that just down to how catchy the songs are and their ability to sort of pander to everybody? Like, is it surprising to you that this is the band that just really did seem to blow up overnight and stay blown up?
It's not surprising that they would get all the critical like hosannas because they were like, they're doing the whole, there are many layers of meaning and you know, the critics and the hipsters, they want the complexity and the contradiction and putting Lil Jon and Benetton and Darom Sala all in the same song. But like, I think they, they were really benefiting from kind of a crescendo in the blog hype situation. Like, you wrote that piece for Ringer about how they were like the last indie buzz band to break through. And they kind of got in right before all the tastemakers started caring
more about rap and R and B and the blogs were kind of killed off by streaming and social media. So like, you know, they, they kind of arrived at just the right time. They were just the right band at just the right time and kind of slipped in just before the door closed.
Yeah. I think, if I remember correctly, you're a little younger than me. You were just a couple of years out of college when the first Vampire Weekend record came out. Like, were you plugged in to sort of the critical discourse about them? All these arguments about, you know, cultural appropriation, Upper West Side, Soweto, stuff like that? Like, were you reading a lot about them and thinking really hard about them? Or was this just like a fun band with some cool tunes, you know, and you don't really have to dig any deeper than that yet because it's not your job?
Well, you know, it was my job. And I did have the baggage because like, I was very tuned in. I was working at Columbus Alive at the time, one of the weekly newspapers here, which sadly is gone like the rest of the weekly newspapers. And I was loading up Pitchfork every day and clicking around the blogs and reading articles by you at The Village Voice. And you know, I was, I was very tuned into the critical discourse and fancied myself to be a part of it. So, yeah, I was definitely engaging with Vampire Weekend on that level from the very start. And I'd be curious-
To see like what my reaction to them would have been if I didn't bring so much context into it like.
Right.
This is a band that I definitely read about before I ever heard them and it definitely like colored the way that I approached their music.
No, I totally agree. They're one of these bands that I kind of wish I could, you know, visit an alternate universe while I don't come to it with any baggage, you know? And I just understand like this person loves them and this person hates them and they both have good reasons and they're fighting, you know, on message boards. Or whatever, like all the critical noise in my head, again, off just a handful of songs, you know, just basically Oxford comma and a couple others, you know? And there's suddenly, you know, hundreds of thousands of words online for me to digest professionally. You know, I'd like to think that doesn't color the way I hear just the music, but I don't think that's really the way music works. I think I've always had all this discourse in the back of my head and it would be nice just for 10 seconds to not have it, you know what I'm saying?
Yeah, definitely. Although I love the discourse.
Well, sure, we all do. We all claim to not love the discourse, but we all secretly love the discourse, you know? And so it's a love hate thing for sure. Absolutely. How do you think about that discourse now, like almost 20 years later, right? Like it can't help but feel a little quaint to me that in 2008, you know, we all had time to argue about this. And this seemed like one of, you know, the most pernicious and unpleasant things going on in the world. We had a band of Ivy Leaguers doing like Afro pop, right? It does, it feels a little weird to me what a, what a hot ticket issue this band was at the beginning. It seems like we should have had other stuff on our mind, maybe?
It is kind of bizarre that it set off so many alarms, but like, I don't know, people are so protective of, of their music scenes. And, you know, people also are very interested in reasons to get angry.
I don't know. I mean, it doesn't, the extent of it and the intensity of it is what kind of blows the mind. But like, I feel like if they were a new band now, there would still be, the reaction that they got would be somewhat similar to the reaction that they get now. Like, they're just such a unique artifact. Like, the way that they carry themselves, and the way they present themselves, it stands out. And it is kind of softly confrontational in terms of, and I mean, they knew what they were doing. They very consciously positioned themselves in a certain way to stand out.
Yeah. Softly confrontational is a great way to put it, right? Because I, it's not, it's not trolling, right? Like, they're not, it's not insincere, but they know what they're doing. They know that this is gonna bother people in a way that's also gonna get attention and also attract people. You know, there's a wryness and a knowingness to it. Like, they know how to kick up a fuss. Like Ezra was a blogger. You know, these are people who know how to be online and to stoke conversation online, you know, occasionally among people who come to hate them. You know, they know what they're doing.
Yeah. You mentioned, when we were emailing, you mentioned like, the fashion aspect of that too, like the preppy qualities. And it's like, I think that that does matter to a certain extent too. Like, it's popular music, and so therefore it's show business and image does factor in. It's like, it's mainly, when you're talking about appreciating music, it is mainly about the sounds coming out of the speakers, but it's not only about that. And like, I think about, you know, the way a band looks affects whether you even choose to engage. And then there's, beyond that, there's like...
In terms of music fandom, like, that's another thing that I write about in the book a lot. It's kind of a thread throughout the book is music fandom as a way to construct your identity. Like, not just around the things that you enjoy listening to, but the things that, you know, that reflects how you want to present yourself to the world. So, like, for them to come along in 2007, 2008, like, in these polo shirts, looking more like the John Mayer fans at my high school, and be heralded as a vanguard of indie rock, it does kind of scramble your brain.
Of course. Yeah. And as you write, you know, you're defining yourself as much by the things you hate as the things you love, right? And I think Vampire Weekend were very useful to people as like the outer boundary. Like, I love Vampire Weekend as one identity. I hate Vampire Weekend is another, you know, just as distinct identity. I can almost picture the hate person before the love person, right?
If you're going to define yourself in opposition to one band from this era, I think Vampire Weekend is a pretty vivid, you know, foil for you personally.
Yeah, absolutely.
You talk late in the book, you know, the first two albums are great, but you talk late in the book about Modern Vampires of the City, you know, their third record from 2013, and you call it one of the most important records of your lifetime, you know? It's like a milestone in my own transition to full-fledged adulthood. You know, as you say, like, I think this book, this band's arc and this band's catalog sort of mirrors the way you talk about the indie rock explosion as a whole. Like, what is it about this record and this era and the overall, you know, album-to-album transition of Vampire Weekend that resonates with you?
I mean, I knew pretty much right away that I loved the album. It was kind of like the album that unlocked this band for me in a way. Like I had, I had listened to the first couple of albums and liked them. And I, you know, I went to see them a couple of times. Uh, like I, I was kind of a casual fan, but like I had this experience listening to Modern Vampires. Right after it came out, I was covering the Hangout Festival, a music festival in Alabama on the beach. And I had to drive a rental car along the Gulf Coast to get there. And so I'm just listening to Modern Vampires of the City, having this like serene kind of,
you know, just one of those special listens to an album that, that you'll have sometimes. And, uh, so I pretty much immediately knew that I was like, ooh, this, I think I'm becoming a much bigger Vampire Weekend fan this album cycle. But there were other aspects of it that made it important to me. Like for one thing, my, as much as I like indie rock, my wife doesn't really care about indie rock. And this is like one of the only indie albums that she actually enjoys. So it's kind of like a foundational record of our household. But, uh, then there was the aspect of like, it came out right before I turned 30. And, you know, I'm only, I'm a few months older than Ezra. So like he's wrestling with the same ideas.
It kind of just hit me right where I was at in terms of feeling like my youth was over and my clock was ticking. And plus I always am extra interested when artists I like start wrestling with like spiritual, existential, religious type questions. And I, I know I wrote this year end essay in 2013 about Modern Vampires of the City and Yeezus that I have not gone back and read for a while. And I'm kind of afraid to go back and read it now, but, uh, you know, drawing, drawing parallels between my two favorite albums of 2013 at the time. So anyway, yeah, it, it was a very important album for me.
That was, it's so funny because I went and looked at the Paz and Jop year-end critics chart for 2013 and number one is Yeezus and number two is Modern Vampire's of the City. And I was like, well, that's funny. Those are two very different headspaces, you know, to occupy and even consider occupying both simultaneously is very funny to me.
I think my point with that piece was something about how they were both like freaking out about the onset of new adulthood.
Sure.
You know, obviously Kanye's way of freaking out was quite different from Ezra's, but.
Right. There is no where the hell is my damn croissant moment on the Modern Vampire's record. You mentioned the spiritual part and I, my favorite song off that record and my favorite Vampire Weekend song still is Yahay, you know, which is, it's really lovely, but kind of an intense song, you know, where Ezra, who's Jewish of course, is talking either about or to God, you know, like he's singing, it seems to me anyway, he's singing directly to God. It's almost like an argument and like you've written really beautifully, both in the book and elsewhere about, you know, growing up in an evangelical household and how your, your life as a Christian and your life as a rock critic intersect. Like I wondered what you made of that song Yahay in particular, you know, and this thread through the whole
Modern Vampire's album, as you say, of like grappling with spirituality.
It's interesting because like Ezra always is obviously, you know, filling up his songs with all these references, kind of these eclectic references to different geography, different cultures, different pop culture moments. And I felt like on that album, there's still some of that going on. Like, you know, you listen to Step and he's, he's quoting Souls of Mischief and then talking about Modest Mouse. And it's sort of the juxtaposition thing is still happening, but like.
The, the spiritual stuff on that album, it doesn't come off to me as like clever. Like it's one of the times when I feel like he is. Really like honestly wrestling with those things like there are times when it's just like, oh, you know, look at this trick that I pulled off. I wrote this clever little song with clever little references and it's like, I don't really see that happening when he's like, it feels like he is getting kind of raw on Yahay and like, you know, bringing some like legit concerns
before God and, you know, obviously, like you said, that's something that kind of courses through the whole album. You've got unbelievers and other stuff. And so, yeah, I mean, that's probably one of the reasons I like it because I do, I appreciate Ezra as like the clever guy and I appreciate the eclecticism and the sophistication and the layers, but like there was something very human about that album and about the way that he approached those subjects that doesn't necessarily touch everything he writes.
Right. And I think that continues. Like, I think part of the reason that Vampire Weekend continues to resonate, you know, it was 2019 as Father of the Bride, right? And like the one Vampire Weekend song my kids, you know, my teenagers now latched onto is Harmony Hall, you know, which I think is in that same vein. It is, it's not, it's not that it's not clever, but it's less about cleverness for its own sake. There's more vulnerability, more humanness to it. I don't want to live like this, but I don't want to die. Like I, that seems like a pivot, like a step, like an evolution that he took as a songwriter and the band took as a band that isn't, that's not necessarily going to happen. You know, there are plenty of bands, great bands, enduring bands, you know, that don't evolve, you know, who don't
get to that phase of seeming like an older, mature, more thoughtful version of themselves. And it's very cool that Vampire Weekend figured out how to kind of do that.
Yeah, and I feel like you're right that I feel like Father of the Bride has a really good balance of that like genuine searching and kind of like real life existential crisis mixed in with the winking side of things.
Yeah. You talk a lot in the book about, you know, like the importance of the OC, you know, the TV show and all this, Sinks, Garden State, et cetera, Grey's Anatomy. You talk about Apple ads, you know, and just the way that this generation of musicians learn to love, you know, being on TV shows, being in commercials, you know, doing things that we were all taught you could not do in the 90s. And so A-Punk and Holiday, especially off Contra, are like songs I love, but songs that I am always going to associate with seeing them on TV ads, like a billion times, you know, like there was that Colbert Report thing where the Vampire Weekend and the Black Keys like did like some sort of fake game show with making fun of themselves for being in so many ads, right?
Like being, you know, very knowing and wry about it. But I wondered if all the commercialism, you know, if the selling outs, you know, affected the way that you hear these songs or any of Vampire Weekend's music, or were we all worried about this the whole time for nothing?
I mean, I don't think it's like an antiquated thing to say that it like taints your experience of the music if a song appears in a commercial and gets that kind of overexposure. Like, I mean, I think that the politics, like the scene politics around it definitely changed.
Because like people, people just kind of came to tolerate that stuff because I think people understand more and more how hard it is to make a living in the music industry. And I mean, it's got, it's only gotten harder since those songs were in commercials. But like, at the same time, it's like, you know, I hear A-Punk and Holiday and I think of the commercials. They're, you know, the, I'm able to, if I'm in the flow of the album, maybe lock in and kind of set that stuff aside. But like, it definitely like can recontextualize the song the same way that like a song appearing in a movie scene or something would. And so like,
I think the idea of like being a sellout. It's so interesting how it's gone away because some of it's by necessity, but I think some of it's also probably opportunistic, like, you know,
the idea of like this indie music edging up towards the world of pop and pop like suddenly becoming kind of like the like the taboo that's being explored like, ooh, look, we're an indie band that can go pop and we're, you know, we're not going to apologize about it. Like it was convenient that that was sort of the trendy critical line of thinking at the same time.
when when it became maybe more of a necessity to get by.
Yeah, it's cool that we're trying to make money now. It's very convenient for us. And do I have this right that Ezra suggests on Twitter that what's the path of the Beyonce song?
Oh, man.
Hold up. He's involved there somewhere and I don't know if it's in if he just suggests it or if he actually contributed it, but he's sort of emblematic of that period where like Father John Misty is invited to like try and write Beyonce songs or whatever. Like that's another thing that was not thinkable, you know, in the 90s or particularly even when Vampire Weekend started, but suddenly became a huge thing, as you write, you know, by the end of the explosion.
Yeah, man, Hold Up by Beyonce is so interesting because like,
Yeah.
you know, it's, you know, it's built around yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's created the concept came from Ezra. He did tweet something and he was working with Diplo in the studio.
And Thank God Diplo was involved. Yeah, that's a huge relief to me, actually.
I don't, I don't remember. I think that is the Beyonce song that Father John Misty also worked on, if I remember correctly. So it's just like such a fascinating artifact along with like,
maybe four or five seconds. I think that that Rihanna, Kanye, Paul McCartney song has Dave Longstruth from Dirty Projectors in the credits. And you can totally hear it like in the bridge of the song, like it just goes from being, you know, a few chords to like these, you know, bizarre melodies tangled in the, you know, jazz chords. You can hear that. Oh, that's the part Dave Longstruth wrote.
What a time to be alive. To wrap up, I think you've already answered this question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. Like, is Vampire Weekend just dad rock now? And is that such a bad thing if they are?
Yeah, I mean, I think they gotta be. I know.
From a practical standpoint, I know you told me, you told your, you took your kids to see them. And I, I actually took my daughter to see them in Cincinnati last year because my wife couldn't make it. But, uh, so in the objective sense, I guess that makes them dad rock. But, uh, I think there's two dimensions to that to think about too. Like, one is just that, like, all of that sort of millennial indie rock as, you know, millennials and, you know, ex-ennials age into, uh, into parenthood.
Into dads.
Yeah, basically, anything that dads liked when they were young, when they become dads, you know, I think is dad rock by default. But, uh,
Ergo, yeah.
There's also, like, with Father of the Bride, it was so interesting. They, they had been, they had been so much a part of that wave of the indie bands going pop. And they just pivoted in the other direction with Father of the Bride and kind of embraced that vaguely jam band-y type sound. And, uh, like Ezra, like, apparently just got into Fish and the Dead a lot. And they were doing the whole sandals thing, like, it just, they kind of steered directly into the dad rock thing. Uh, and maybe that's just an example of, you know, they're always kind of zigging where people expect them to zag.
But yeah, I think as, as someone who's, who's been a dad for a while now, I've, I've kind of let go of having any kind of shame about the term dad rock. And I'm like, hell yeah, it's dad rock.
Hell yeah.
By the way, Father of the Bride, super underrated. I think it's everybody as good as modern vampires. I think it might, there are definitely days when it's my favorite Vampire Weekend album. And the people who... Felt like it was a misstep or like not as good as the first three albums are totally wrong. I need to get that on the record. I mean, it's already, I'm already on the record writing it many, many times at Stereogum and on social media, but I just, you know, audio, I need to get it on the record.
It's another medium. It's a, means a totally different thing. And I agree with you, actually. It's my kids' favorite, you know, the only Vampire Weekend record they really know or care about. Like even at the show, the songs that they picked out and wanted to hear in the car afterward were all, were all Father. The song called Sympathy. And I, so there, yeah, I don't know, I'm not, I'm wondering if they're responding specifically to the jam band aspect, to the dad rock aspect, what it is about that record specifically that's more appealing to them even than A Punk, even than, you know, Step. I would be curious to know what makes that record interesting to teenagers, or at least my teenagers.
But I'm happy to announce here on this show with your help that it's, it's every bit as good as anything else they've done.
Hell, yeah. Join the movement.
Hell, yeah. This has been fantastic, Chris. Thanks so much. Congrats on the book.
Yeah, thank you so much.
Thanks very much to our guest this week, Chris DeVille. Thanks as always to our producers, Olivia Creary, Christopher Sutton, and Justin Sales. And thanks very much to you for listening. And now let's all go listen to A Punk by Vampire Weekend. Thanks a lot.
Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger, fresh for everyone. Restrictions apply. See site or store for details.
For families facing hunger this holiday, your generosity could mean one less difficult choice. Across the Feeding America Network, your gift fulfills the promise of connecting neighbors to nourishing food and stability. This Thanksgiving, give at feedingamerica.org/holiday.
Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated