One of the welcome things about sports blogs — at least until this point; fingers crossed! — is that they have generally been relatively immune to the meta-arguments that happen in music blog comment sections almost every day. Case in point: Vampire Weekend. VW is a weirdly preppy, idiosyncratic band, and they sure do bring the angry out. To be fair, when you are openly braggy about your Columbia education and preppy east-coast upbringing, the anger should be expected. See: here.
I think the stages go something like this:
Band releases uber-promising EP; thanks to internet word-of-blog, band gets huge before even laying a whole album down; the backlash begins; the anti-backlash begins; Pitchfork’s glowing review baits the backlash; everyone gets so confused they can’t even enjoy the music anymore.
Sigh. Sometimes it’s better to enjoy culture in a vacuum.
Update: (Oh, and for the record, any band that has this:
The name of this band is Vampire Weekend. We are specialists in the following styles: “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”, “Upper West Side Soweto”, “Campus”, and “Oxford Comma Riddim.”
on their MySpace page probably knows they deserve what they get.)
