Spotlight: JHU Politik

WHY WORDS MATTER IN THE FIGHT FOR MARRIAGE EQUALITY

By Danielle Stern ’13, Contributing Writer

*This article originally appeared on JHU Politik

I used to be against gay marriage. I used to argue that civil unions and domestic partnerships were a work- able equivalent and that calling your loved one “part- ner” should certainly be enough. I did not think that the labels mattered, nor could I fathom that anyone would care. What I didn’t realize is that the words “husband” and “wife” are more than just words; they are symbols of “traditional” relationships.

I certainly am not against gay marriage now, and I am a strong advocate for the term “marriage” in both all that it symbolizes and actually provides. On the most basic lev- el, creating separate relationship terminology for same- sex couples alienates committed partners from their op- posite-sex counterparts. There is something inherently unequal about using two sets of terms to describe what is, undeniably so, love of the same caliber.

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WJHU brought the 90’s back last Friday

by Emily Bihl

Last Friday night, your dream of the nineties was alive at the Ottobar.

Now, please understand that I don’t make such a statement lightly. I’m well aware of all that it entails — though most of us were no more than ten years old, tops, when that era ended, we’ve all got some pretty hefty memories tied up in those years (remember those brightly colored cereals, those classic cartoons, the Clinton administr — well, actually, kids, it’s probably better if you weren’t exposed to the fine points of that one too early).

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On Deck with WJHU: Adele records theme for James Bond movie

by Taylor Colvin

In her first studio recording since her sophomore album 21, Adele lends her sultry vocals to the newest James Bond film, “Skyfall. “

With its brassy horn intro, 77-piece orchestral arrangement and creeping minor chord progression, the namesake track might be even more Bond than a shaken martini and a Brioni suit.

And in case the throwback tune still isn’t “Bond” enough for you, the track was released for download on October 5th at 7:07pm, (that’s 0:07 British Summer Time…see what they did there?)

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Lupe Fiasco’s Next Great Rap Album

by Kimia G. 

Lupe Fiasco’s new album, Food and Liqueur II: The Great American Rap Album Pt. I, will give you food for thought, but little to toast to.

It’s a dark album that emphasizes class disparities and the convoluted state of the media, as well as the way a certain type of woman is portrayed and revered, especially when it comes to the fashion industry .

Lupe Fiasco comes through once again with his uncanny ability to merge hooks and strong lyrics.

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Mountain Goats @ Ottobar 10/10/2012

The Ottobar is a place for storytellers.

 Or, at least it was on Wednesday night as John Darnielle took the stage in the cozy black box, spilling his guts between bursts of blunt lyriced riffs. John, the heart and soul of The Mountain Goats, his singer-songwriter project which has hosted various extraneous members over two decades, was as honest as his crystal clear vocals last night, peppering his set list with stories about his complicated realtionship with an abusive stepfather and his time working as a nursing assistant in a mental hospital.

 

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Confession time. I, like many (I hope) other folks my age, came to indie rock not through an overwhelming desire to (further) alienate myself from my schoolmates or be purposefully obscure (as some of you may remember, there was no glory in that back in Middle School), but rather quite by accident. Furthermore, I came to indie rock through relatively mainstream means. Specifically, the Garden State soundtrack. I’ll skip over the part where I tell you that the opening fade-in of “Caring Is Creepy” still gives me absolute chills and rockets me into a corner of my subconscious that I, just as often as not, forget exists. I’ll skip over the part where, in spite of my from-birth desire to be as contrary as possible, I, sitting on my couch in pajamas, wholeheartedly nod when Natalie Portman tells Zac Braff, “you’ve gotta listen to this one song, it’ll change your life.” I’ll even skip past the later episode where I lovingly, if illegally, burn the CD for the first bowtie-wearing boy who ever blindsided me with my own affection for him. Nobody wants to hear about that anyway, and what’s more, it’s not what Drunk Rock is about.[1] Anyway. Back to the point. I had never heard anything[2] like The Shins—their lyrics, ostensibly, made exactly zero sense[3], and yet, yet!, there was something wildly accessible about them. I had thought that grown-up music was supposed to be hard, difficult to grasp, an acquired taste full of concerted effort.[4] But here were The Shins! They had a dumb name! They looked like out-of-work kindergarten teachers! They sang about being turned on by tennis shorts![5] Who the fuck were these guys?! But who they were didn’t really matter. Soon enough I was listening to them on heavy, heavy rotation on the way to and from school and maybe even in the locker room in the fleeting, walk-to-the-gallows-like moments before gym class. And that’s sort of the problem with The Shins—whereas, normally at this point in the article I’d find some way of aligning the emotions in their songs with something I was going through at a goofy time in my life, The Shins eschew this. “I left all my friends at the morning bus stop/shaking their heads/’What kind of life you dream of?/You’re allergic to love!’” While I might[6] have some conception of what this is supposed to mean now, as a jaded[7], complicated[8] college Senior on the cusp of whateverthefuck, I had absolutely no idea at that point. But that didn’t mean these lyrics didn’t mean anything—in fact, I always got the distinct impression that James Mercer knew exactly what he was talking about. Listening to The Shins is, in that way, like listening to someone sing in another language—beautiful, emotional, foreign. And so The Shins became, if not my favorite band, then at least the band I was most proud to name among my favorite bands. Oh, Inverted World was the ideal album for filling up time—and at a moment in one’s life when one is constantly trying to get from one unbearably unsatisfying moment to the next[9], The Shins were the ideal band. Listen, just humor me here: next time you’re on a car trip, I double dog dare you to put on song one of the album[10] and not go on to listen to the album all the way through. You can’t do it, can you? Of course you can’t. Do you think I’d double dog dare you for something I was just going to end up regretting and being proven wrong about? What kind of asshole do I look like? First off, the album moves seamlessly from start to finish. Even otherwise-technical-blips such as Your Algebra[11] fall through the cracks (in this case, a good thing) because, even where they fail, they still fit. Here’s what’ll happen: you’ll press play, and then the next time you’ll move a muscle is (approx.) 33 minutes later when the album is finished. With some albums, it’s virtually impossible to listen to less than the full tracklist; Oh, Inverted World is exactly such an album. Does this, in and of itself, make The Shins great? No. Of course not. Are they, however, Great? Yes. Duh. Of course they fucking are. First off, you don’t befuddle an entire nation and leave them still wanting to buy every album you’ve ever touched without being at least a little bit genius[12]. Second—James Mercer, after bestowing gleaming album after gleaming album onto his adoring public with The Shins, went on to create Broken Bells with Danger Mouse as a side project, which ended up being one of the most successful hype-machine-worthy masterpieces of the 2000s.[13] Three—I saw The Shins just this summer[14], and they still fucking rock. Yes, that one’s not very technical support[15]. But it’s true, and I’m telling you about it. Really, dude, you should’ve been there—it was sick. [1] Drunk Rock is about the music you used to listen to, and the person you used to be before you were smart enough to realize you weren’t as tidy as all that. Maybe. Or maybe it’s just about booze and good music. (I don’t know; I’m pretty drunk.) [2] This is not strictly true—I had, of course, grown up to Talking Heads. Let’s be real, here; I’m not a cavedweller. [3] “Godspeed/All the bakers at dawn/They all cut their thumbs/And bleed into their buns/Till they melt away.” [4] That is to say, Brian Eno. [5] “Turn A Square”, Chutes Too Narrow [6] It’s about girls, right? [7] Ugh. [8] Dammit. [9] That is to say, Middle School. [10] Which, if you’re wondering, is “Caring Is Creepy”—and honestly, if you gain nothing else from this album, remember that that is probably one of the best fucking song titles in the history of fucking song titles. REMEMBER THAT. [11] Side note: try to make it through Freshman year algebra class without thinking of this phrase fifty thousand times. “You can take YOUR ALGEBRA and stuff it, Mrs. Tingley!” “To hell with YOUR ALGEBRA.” Point is, if Holden Caulfield were incised about Order of Operations, he’d basically use this phrase all the time. [12] I reiterate: they have a song called “Caring Is Creepy.” C’mon. [13] If you think I fact-checked this, you are reading the wrong damn column. [14] I also saw The Shins at the Electric Factory in Philly back in High School, right when Wincing The Night Away came out. It is partially because of this night that I firmly maintain that any boy who agrees to go to a concert of a mutually beloved band with you and doesn’t pay you back for the ticket essentially owes you an end-of-the-night makeout sesh, but that’s neither here nor there. [15] In my defense, it does sort of prove that The Shins’ whole “we’re inexplicable and endearing and say things like ‘lah-dee-dah’ in our songs” gimmick is more than a gimmick—or, at least, more than a gimmick that we as a music-consuming public are smart enough to catch on within, what, eleven years? Eleven years, guys. ELEVEN YEARS. Fuck it, these guys should run for President(s). High-res

Confession time.

I, like many (I hope) other folks my age, came to indie rock not through an overwhelming desire to (further) alienate myself from my schoolmates or be purposefully obscure (as some of you may remember, there was no glory in that back in Middle School), but rather quite by accident. Furthermore, I came to indie rock through relatively mainstream means. Specifically, the Garden State soundtrack.

I’ll skip over the part where I tell you that the opening fade-in of “Caring Is Creepy” still gives me absolute chills and rockets me into a corner of my subconscious that I, just as often as not, forget exists. I’ll skip over the part where, in spite of my from-birth desire to be as contrary as possible, I, sitting on my couch in pajamas, wholeheartedly nod when Natalie Portman tells Zac Braff, “you’ve gotta listen to this one song, it’ll change your life.” I’ll even skip past the later episode where I lovingly, if illegally, burn the CD for the first bowtie-wearing boy who ever blindsided me with my own affection for him. Nobody wants to hear about that anyway, and what’s more, it’s not what Drunk Rock is about.[1]

Anyway. Back to the point.

I had never heard anything[2] like The Shins—their lyrics, ostensibly, made exactly zero sense[3], and yet, yet!, there was something wildly accessible about them. I had thought that grown-up music was supposed to be hard, difficult to grasp, an acquired taste full of concerted effort.[4] But here were The Shins! They had a dumb name! They looked like out-of-work kindergarten teachers! They sang about being turned on by tennis shorts![5] Who the fuck were these guys?!

But who they were didn’t really matter. Soon enough I was listening to them on heavy, heavy rotation on the way to and from school and maybe even in the locker room in the fleeting, walk-to-the-gallows-like moments before gym class.

And that’s sort of the problem with The Shins—whereas, normally at this point in the article I’d find some way of aligning the emotions in their songs with something I was going through at a goofy time in my life, The Shins eschew this. “I left all my friends at the morning bus stop/shaking their heads/’What kind of life you dream of?/You’re allergic to love!’” While I might[6] have some conception of what this is supposed to mean now, as a jaded[7], complicated[8] college Senior on the cusp of whateverthefuck, I had absolutely no idea at that point. But that didn’t mean these lyrics didn’t mean anything—in fact, I always got the distinct impression that James Mercer knew exactly what he was talking about. Listening to The Shins is, in that way, like listening to someone sing in another language—beautiful, emotional, foreign. And so The Shins became, if not my favorite band, then at least the band I was most proud to name among my favorite bands. Oh, Inverted World was the ideal album for filling up time—and at a moment in one’s life when one is constantly trying to get from one unbearably unsatisfying moment to the next[9], The Shins were the ideal band. Listen, just humor me here: next time you’re on a car trip, I double dog dare you to put on song one of the album[10] and not go on to listen to the album all the way through. You can’t do it, can you? Of course you can’t. Do you think I’d double dog dare you for something I was just going to end up regretting and being proven wrong about? What kind of asshole do I look like?

First off, the album moves seamlessly from start to finish. Even otherwise-technical-blips such as Your Algebra[11] fall through the cracks (in this case, a good thing) because, even where they fail, they still fit. Here’s what’ll happen: you’ll press play, and then the next time you’ll move a muscle is (approx.) 33 minutes later when the album is finished. With some albums, it’s virtually impossible to listen to less than the full tracklist; Oh, Inverted World is exactly such an album.

Does this, in and of itself, make The Shins great? No. Of course not. Are they, however, Great? Yes. Duh. Of course they fucking are. First off, you don’t befuddle an entire nation and leave them still wanting to buy every album you’ve ever touched without being at least a little bit genius[12]. Second—James Mercer, after bestowing gleaming album after gleaming album onto his adoring public with The Shins, went on to create Broken Bells with Danger Mouse as a side project, which ended up being one of the most successful hype-machine-worthy masterpieces of the 2000s.[13] Three—I saw The Shins just this summer[14], and they still fucking rock. Yes, that one’s not very technical support[15]. But it’s true, and I’m telling you about it. Really, dude, you should’ve been there—it was sick.


[1] Drunk Rock is about the music you used to listen to, and the person you used to be before you were smart enough to realize you weren’t as tidy as all that. Maybe. Or maybe it’s just about booze and good music. (I don’t know; I’m pretty drunk.)

[2] This is not strictly true—I had, of course, grown up to Talking Heads. Let’s be real, here; I’m not a cavedweller.

[3] “Godspeed/All the bakers at dawn/They all cut their thumbs/And bleed into their buns/Till they melt away.”

[4] That is to say, Brian Eno.

[5] “Turn A Square”, Chutes Too Narrow

[6] It’s about girls, right?

[7] Ugh.

[8] Dammit.

[9] That is to say, Middle School.

[10] Which, if you’re wondering, is “Caring Is Creepy”—and honestly, if you gain nothing else from this album, remember that that is probably one of the best fucking song titles in the history of fucking song titles. REMEMBER THAT.

[11] Side note: try to make it through Freshman year algebra class without thinking of this phrase fifty thousand times. “You can take YOUR ALGEBRA and stuff it, Mrs. Tingley!” “To hell with YOUR ALGEBRA.” Point is, if Holden Caulfield were incised about Order of Operations, he’d basically use this phrase all the time.

[12] I reiterate: they have a song called “Caring Is Creepy.” C’mon.

[13] If you think I fact-checked this, you are reading the wrong damn column.

[14] I also saw The Shins at the Electric Factory in Philly back in High School, right when Wincing The Night Away came out. It is partially because of this night that I firmly maintain that any boy who agrees to go to a concert of a mutually beloved band with you and doesn’t pay you back for the ticket essentially owes you an end-of-the-night makeout sesh, but that’s neither here nor there.

[15] In my defense, it does sort of prove that The Shins’ whole “we’re inexplicable and endearing and say things like ‘lah-dee-dah’ in our songs” gimmick is more than a gimmick—or, at least, more than a gimmick that we as a music-consuming public are smart enough to catch on within, what, eleven years? Eleven years, guys. ELEVEN YEARS. Fuck it, these guys should run for President(s).

New Releases from Three Unique Bands

by Nicky DePaul

Over the past few weeks, three bands released very different albums. The Presets returned with their third studio LP,Pacifica, The xx released Coexist, and Animal Collective released Centipede Hz.

As Top 40 radio is increasingly flooded with manufactured electro-pop, crossover country and similar-sounding rap, these albums offer an intellectual and personal experience that snaps listeners out of the manufactured lull into which modern popular music has fallen.

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Note: This is Drunk Rock, a new ill-advised, potentially-regular column where emily gets weepy and nostalgic about old albums that you may have missed (or wish you missed) the first time around. Okay, kids. We’re gonna mix it up a little here with a heart-to-heart. Personal anecdote time. The first time I ever listened to Elliott Smith I was lying down with my eyes closed, locked in a bedroom, trying desperately not to go to sleep. Some of you might point out that that’s pretty much the least ideal way to try not to sleep, and those of you would be right, but here’s the story. It had to do with a boy—of course it had to do with a boy, because it’s absolutely too bewildering and filled with teenage naïveté and sex and drugs and alcohol for it to be any other way—but most of the story takes place without him. He’s just in the background somewhere, on the other side of that door. I had met M at a junior summer camp at an Ivy League school that neither of us would go on to attend. He was taking a Lit course and had learned Latin at his boarding school. I said to him, “You’re one of those guys, aren’t you? One of those guys who sits around in cafes and reads Hemingway?” and he wordlessly produced The Sun Also Rises from his pack. He bought me tea and I helped him hang a Miles Davis poster above his bed. Later that week, when our first time alone together morphed head-spinningly before my eyes from casual hangout to romantic entanglement, I gazed, stunned, into Miles’ solemn eyes, Kind of Blue in tidy compliment to the red marks all across my neck. Anyway. The summer came and went and September found me at a house party he was hosting. I spent the evening talking to everyone but him (where was he, in retrospect?) and refusing to put down my drink for even a second, fragments of some After School Special or parental warning going through my head. It didn’t seem like the kind of party those things happened at, but I didn’t know better, and to be fair, it seems like the kind of thing where nobody ever says “oh, yeah, this is a party where I’m gonna get dosed.” At some point in the evening, my not-boyfriend remembers that I exist and everyone settles in to watch “Silence of the Lambs”. After the movie, two-thirds of the party goes out on the back patio and smokes pot. To put things in perspective here— I was too young and sheltered to be anything less than absolutely stunned[1] by the sudden appearance of drugs, and I still believe to this day that I will never reach an age at which I will be desensitized to “Silence of the Lambs”, so here’s where it starts to get weird. Long story short, pot smoke wafts into M’s parents’ Xanadu-sized neocolonial mansion. Liquor somehow materializes. At some point I hear M’s shrill, Catholic mother coming down the stairs calling for him. I panic. I close myself in the guest bedroom, put my headphones on, and lie down, determined that, if nothing else, I would not be yelled at by M’s mother for being involved in illicit drug use. The next several hours, for me, are spent in absolute simmering confusion. I lie on the guest bed, terrified variously of graying Irish Catholic women, and jail, and serial killers who want to eat your skin. I want desperately not to fall asleep (so that I won’t have psychologically terrifying nightmares) and not to leave the bedroom (so that I won’t have to face M or his mother). I feel both affronted and forgotten, a combination which is difficult to achieve unless you’re me. But one iTunes track leads to another and somehow I wind up listening to Elliott Smith’s New Moon, which has mistakenly found its way onto my pink original-mini iPod via my father’s computer[2]. In my state of social- and physical- paralysis, the somehow familiar yet tenuous-sounding voice of Elliott Smith keeps me comfortingly half-asleep, half-awake in the middle of the night until the coast is clear[3]. We should all be so lucky as to have Elliott Smith play the part of Virgil to our teenage Dantes, solemnly if somewhat spookily ferrying us through uncertainties too grand for us to comprehend in the moment. To this day, the opening chords of New Moon ring of simultaneous teenage woe and quiet strength, fading into full-blown song from some nebulous space just north of white noise. Elliott himself is something between ghost and mirage, coolly navigating with what is either detachment or an uncommonly level head; the “Angel in the Snow” to combat the inferno. A private guide to the weird times that we all encounter between middle school and college, providing ghostly voiceover until those times are over. Speaking of “over”: when I eventually decide that it’s safe to open my door and venture out, everyone is either asleep or gone and the party is done. I’ve missed the danger but I’ve also missed the entire party. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure I got the better end of the deal.   [1] Keep in mind that I have no idea at this point in my young life what weed does to a person. As far as I’m concerned, smoking a spliff turns you into Zool, Keeper of the Keys from “Ghostbusters”…a movie which, by the way, I remained convinced was a horror movie well into my teenage years.   [2] Say what you will about our current age of digital music sharing, but it’s worth mentioning that this particularly well-timed musical mix-up could not have occurred in any other time. Nobody has ever, to my knowledge, mistakenly brought her father’s records to the house of a boy she wasn’t really dating and accidentally played them (to all-around benefit) in a moment of existential crisis. [3] Ex-post-facto: the irony of the fact that a track entitled “High Times” appears on this album is not lost on me. High-res

Note: This is Drunk Rock, a new ill-advised, potentially-regular column where emily gets weepy and nostalgic about old albums that you may have missed (or wish you missed) the first time around.

Okay, kids. We’re gonna mix it up a little here with a heart-to-heart. Personal anecdote time.

The first time I ever listened to Elliott Smith I was lying down with my eyes closed, locked in a bedroom, trying desperately not to go to sleep. Some of you might point out that that’s pretty much the least ideal way to try not to sleep, and those of you would be right, but here’s the story.

It had to do with a boy—of course it had to do with a boy, because it’s absolutely too bewildering and filled with teenage naïveté and sex and drugs and alcohol for it to be any other way—but most of the story takes place without him. He’s just in the background somewhere, on the other side of that door.

I had met M at a junior summer camp at an Ivy League school that neither of us would go on to attend. He was taking a Lit course and had learned Latin at his boarding school. I said to him, “You’re one of those guys, aren’t you? One of those guys who sits around in cafes and reads Hemingway?” and he wordlessly produced The Sun Also Rises from his pack. He bought me tea and I helped him hang a Miles Davis poster above his bed. Later that week, when our first time alone together morphed head-spinningly before my eyes from casual hangout to romantic entanglement, I gazed, stunned, into Miles’ solemn eyes, Kind of Blue in tidy compliment to the red marks all across my neck.

Anyway.

The summer came and went and September found me at a house party he was hosting. I spent the evening talking to everyone but him (where was he, in retrospect?) and refusing to put down my drink for even a second, fragments of some After School Special or parental warning going through my head. It didn’t seem like the kind of party those things happened at, but I didn’t know better, and to be fair, it seems like the kind of thing where nobody ever says “oh, yeah, this is a party where I’m gonna get dosed.”

At some point in the evening, my not-boyfriend remembers that I exist and everyone settles in to watch “Silence of the Lambs”. After the movie, two-thirds of the party goes out on the back patio and smokes pot. To put things in perspective here— I was too young and sheltered to be anything less than absolutely stunned[1] by the sudden appearance of drugs, and I still believe to this day that I will never reach an age at which I will be desensitized to “Silence of the Lambs”, so here’s where it starts to get weird.

Long story short, pot smoke wafts into M’s parents’ Xanadu-sized neocolonial mansion. Liquor somehow materializes. At some point I hear M’s shrill, Catholic mother coming down the stairs calling for him. I panic. I close myself in the guest bedroom, put my headphones on, and lie down, determined that, if nothing else, I would not be yelled at by M’s mother for being involved in illicit drug use.

The next several hours, for me, are spent in absolute simmering confusion. I lie on the guest bed, terrified variously of graying Irish Catholic women, and jail, and serial killers who want to eat your skin. I want desperately not to fall asleep (so that I won’t have psychologically terrifying nightmares) and not to leave the bedroom (so that I won’t have to face M or his mother). I feel both affronted and forgotten, a combination which is difficult to achieve unless you’re me. But one iTunes track leads to another and somehow I wind up listening to Elliott Smith’s New Moon, which has mistakenly found its way onto my pink original-mini iPod via my father’s computer[2]. In my state of social- and physical- paralysis, the somehow familiar yet tenuous-sounding voice of Elliott Smith keeps me comfortingly half-asleep, half-awake in the middle of the night until the coast is clear[3].

We should all be so lucky as to have Elliott Smith play the part of Virgil to our teenage Dantes, solemnly if somewhat spookily ferrying us through uncertainties too grand for us to comprehend in the moment. To this day, the opening chords of New Moon ring of simultaneous teenage woe and quiet strength, fading into full-blown song from some nebulous space just north of white noise. Elliott himself is something between ghost and mirage, coolly navigating with what is either detachment or an uncommonly level head; the “Angel in the Snow” to combat the inferno. A private guide to the weird times that we all encounter between middle school and college, providing ghostly voiceover until those times are over.

Speaking of “over”: when I eventually decide that it’s safe to open my door and venture out, everyone is either asleep or gone and the party is done. I’ve missed the danger but I’ve also missed the entire party.

In retrospect, I’m pretty sure I got the better end of the deal.

 


[1] Keep in mind that I have no idea at this point in my young life what weed does to a person. As far as I’m concerned, smoking a spliff turns you into Zool, Keeper of the Keys from “Ghostbusters”…a movie which, by the way, I remained convinced was a horror movie well into my teenage years.

 

[2] Say what you will about our current age of digital music sharing, but it’s worth mentioning that this particularly well-timed musical mix-up could not have occurred in any other time. Nobody has ever, to my knowledge, mistakenly brought her father’s records to the house of a boy she wasn’t really dating and accidentally played them (to all-around benefit) in a moment of existential crisis.

[3] Ex-post-facto: the irony of the fact that a track entitled “High Times” appears on this album is not lost on me.

Note: This is Drunk Rock, a new ill-advised, potentially-regular column where emily gets weepy and nostalgic about old albums that you may have missed (or wish you missed) the first time around. Okay. So. Readers. None of you are going to want to hear this—none of you are going to want to hear this much in the same way that a lot of people don’t want to hear a lot of things anyone might be apt to say when drunk (“your boyfriend is cheating on you”/ ”your dad is hot” / ”have you gained weight?”)—but I have to say it, because it is my job. Or, moreover, because it is the principle objective of this non-paying endeavor I have unceremoniously committed myself to with zero prompting. And, if we’re being honest, how many times do you drunkenly declare something and then not follow through? Er, wrong question—rather, how many times do you drunkenly declare you’re going to do something stupid and then not do it provided you’re still drunk? Chances are you have a few physical (and emotional?) scars that are pretty good testament to the fact that you follow through with your drunken dares. But that’s just a guess. What was I talking about? Oh yes. Vampire Weekend. Vampire Weekend is a band that, regrettable as it may be, is pretty much incapable of producing a less than perfect pop album. If you are in college and you have not spent at least one summer car ride/weepy Sunday night/emotionally confounding make-out session listening to Vampire Weekend, I simply do not know what kind of life you are leading. Now. Don’t get confused. I’m not saying that Vampire Weekend is a particularly profound (“aaooh, aaaahh-ooh, oooh-ooh, oooooh-oooh—ooh-oooh-oooh, oooh-ooh-oooh-ooh”) or universally applicable (“you spilled kefir on your kaffiyeh”) band. I am just saying that, damn, the boys from Columbia know how to craft a good hook. And here’s the kicker: they know how to make an album that a) is going to make you grin at some point during its appealingly-versatile thirty-one minutes and b) is going to somehow seem applicable to you[1], even though you’ve never accidentally had a homosexual liaison with a diplomat’s son and you literally don’t give a fuck about an Oxford comma and you don’t even know how to spell horchata, let alone know where to find some. Vampire Weekend are good storytellers. They’re probably assholes, as most good storytellers are, but that doesn’t make it any easier to ignore that infectious impulse to join them in singing about sweaters at the bottom of the ocean or Wolfords or whatever the hell else it is that they’re on about now. Seriously, do you guys even know what Wolfords are? Do you know who Richard Serra is? I do, but only because I googled all that shit when I had “White Sky” stuck in my head for the ten billionth time. Jesus. You’re singing it now, aren’t you? And you still don’t fucking know who Richard Serra is. Go to their concerts even though they suck live. Go buy their albums even though you already know all the songs. It doesn’t matter. They’ve won anyway. They’re just too damn clever and deliciously unaffected. They’re making you think that they’re you, even though they probably have friends who have yachts and go on ski vacations to the Alps and you’re still considering it a good life when you have a frozen pizza left at the end of the week. Vampire Weekend is cooler than you, and they know it, and they never wear socks and somehow make that seem like an okay thing to do, and yet I fucking love them. Why shouldn’t they be assholes[2].  when they’ve achieved complex psychological, Stockholm Syndrome-level shit like that? Congrats, boys. You probably deserve it. [1] Some of you who feel particularly well attuned to Vampire Weekend’s lexicon and, ehem, moral dilemmas may already be mobilizing to come to my apartment and yell about how Vampire Weekend really gets you. But think about it: both you and Vampire Weekend studied undergrad at a university in America. That’s literally where the similarity ends. You have exactly as much of a shared experience with Ezra Koenig as you do with the Unabomber. Chew on that for a few minutes before you come throw pebbles at my window. [2] When I saw VW back in the day, back before killing “A-Punk” on Guitar Hero had gotten anyone laid or “Cape Cod Kwassa-Kwassa” had provided college students with any reason to remember who Peter Gabriel is (while simultaneously continuing to viciously ignore the enormous musical influence of Paul Simon), the band tried to get the entire audience to sing the (never-before-heard) “ooh” chorus portion of “White Sky”. When we failed miserably (duh), Ezra became visibly agitated and audibly facepalmed.  Here’s a fun trick: unearth someone who has never heard that song from whatever rock they live under. Describe the “ooh” portion to them without singing it. Ask them to sing it back to you. See how well they do. Now try to tell me that Ezra isn’t a douchebag. High-res

Note: This is Drunk Rock, a new ill-advised, potentially-regular column where emily gets weepy and nostalgic about old albums that you may have missed (or wish you missed) the first time around.

Okay. So. Readers.

None of you are going to want to hear this—none of you are going to want to hear this much in the same way that a lot of people don’t want to hear a lot of things anyone might be apt to say when drunk (“your boyfriend is cheating on you”/ ”your dad is hot” / ”have you gained weight?”)—but I have to say it, because it is my job. Or, moreover, because it is the principle objective of this non-paying endeavor I have unceremoniously committed myself to with zero prompting. And, if we’re being honest, how many times do you drunkenly declare something and then not follow through? Er, wrong question—rather, how many times do you drunkenly declare you’re going to do something stupid and then not do it provided you’re still drunk?

Chances are you have a few physical (and emotional?) scars that are pretty good testament to the fact that you follow through with your drunken dares. But that’s just a guess.

What was I talking about? Oh yes. Vampire Weekend.

Vampire Weekend is a band that, regrettable as it may be, is pretty much incapable of producing a less than perfect pop album. If you are in college and you have not spent at least one summer car ride/weepy Sunday night/emotionally confounding make-out session listening to Vampire Weekend, I simply do not know what kind of life you are leading.

Now. Don’t get confused. I’m not saying that Vampire Weekend is a particularly profound (“aaooh, aaaahh-ooh, oooh-ooh, oooooh-oooh—ooh-oooh-oooh, oooh-ooh-oooh-ooh”) or universally applicable (“you spilled kefir on your kaffiyeh”) band. I am just saying that, damn, the boys from Columbia know how to craft a good hook. And here’s the kicker: they know how to make an album that a) is going to make you grin at some point during its appealingly-versatile thirty-one minutes and b) is going to somehow seem applicable to you[1], even though you’ve never accidentally had a homosexual liaison with a diplomat’s son and you literally don’t give a fuck about an Oxford comma and you don’t even know how to spell horchata, let alone know where to find some.

Vampire Weekend are good storytellers. They’re probably assholes, as most good storytellers are, but that doesn’t make it any easier to ignore that infectious impulse to join them in singing about sweaters at the bottom of the ocean or Wolfords or whatever the hell else it is that they’re on about now. Seriously, do you guys even know what Wolfords are? Do you know who Richard Serra is? I do, but only because I googled all that shit when I had “White Sky” stuck in my head for the ten billionth time. Jesus. You’re singing it now, aren’t you? And you still don’t fucking know who Richard Serra is.

Go to their concerts even though they suck live. Go buy their albums even though you already know all the songs. It doesn’t matter. They’ve won anyway. They’re just too damn clever and deliciously unaffected. They’re making you think that they’re you, even though they probably have friends who have yachts and go on ski vacations to the Alps and you’re still considering it a good life when you have a frozen pizza left at the end of the week. Vampire Weekend is cooler than you, and they know it, and they never wear socks and somehow make that seem like an okay thing to do, and yet I fucking love them. Why shouldn’t they be assholes[2].  when they’ve achieved complex psychological, Stockholm Syndrome-level shit like that? Congrats, boys. You probably deserve it.


[1] Some of you who feel particularly well attuned to Vampire Weekend’s lexicon and, ehem, moral dilemmas may already be mobilizing to come to my apartment and yell about how Vampire Weekend really gets you. But think about it: both you and Vampire Weekend studied undergrad at a university in America. That’s literally where the similarity ends. You have exactly as much of a shared experience with Ezra Koenig as you do with the Unabomber. Chew on that for a few minutes before you come throw pebbles at my window.

[2] When I saw VW back in the day, back before killing “A-Punk” on Guitar Hero had gotten anyone laid or “Cape Cod Kwassa-Kwassa” had provided college students with any reason to remember who Peter Gabriel is (while simultaneously continuing to viciously ignore the enormous musical influence of Paul Simon), the band tried to get the entire audience to sing the (never-before-heard) “ooh” chorus portion of “White Sky”. When we failed miserably (duh), Ezra became visibly agitated and audibly facepalmed.  Here’s a fun trick: unearth someone who has never heard that song from whatever rock they live under. Describe the “ooh” portion to them without singing it. Ask them to sing it back to you. See how well they do. Now try to tell me that Ezra isn’t a douchebag.