Observer

Issue date: 3/24/09 Section: Life & Leisure

I am listening to Vampire Weekend's eponymous debut right now, and one little ineluctable fact about the things is that it is not absolutely terrible, no matter what the conjured ghost of Lester Bangs may cry out in your sweaty nightmares.

It's just bad.

It may be helpful to briefly plagiarize some scribbling that reflects my own thoughts concerning the album that I gleaned right before writing this up: it's clean pressed, neat and in all way despicable (that last thought is an original, but I assume those other articles eventually get around to making this point).

I'm sure that you're thinking to yourself, "now I want to know why exactly this thing is despicable, all the articles I read about this album don't even really talk about the music itself, and are more or less a priori judgments, even the ones that hurl this claim at other articles while committing the self same sin as the one they criticize."

Quite rightfully so, dutiful reader. To the text!

A common modus operandi of mine, as a man who is by turns both indulgent and generous, is to take a man at his best, not all in all. So let's examine their highest charting single, "Oxford Comma."

I'm not even going to mention the lesser works on the album, like "Campus," stuff completely beyond redemption. That particular ditty has little melody, less feeling, and cringe worthy lyrics: "I wake up my shoulder's cold…drag my feet…I see you walking across the campus. How I am supposed to pretend I never want to see you again?"

Really, is this the kind of life you lead?

Perhaps this is just a bit difficult for me to grasp, because in point of fact I am a very suspicious man, and I think one would do well to always have a shake of the hand and big ole smile at the ready, gathering information what one can, and putting it in down in a well maintained A-Z folio to be kept in a safe; the contents therein 'to be burned upon expiration.'

The subject matter of "Oxford Comma" is something I find to be more relatable. I too write in American, and also I too have asked myself this eternal question: "Why would you lie about how much Coke you have? Why would you lie about something dumb like that?"

However, I can answer this question, and it is the form of premeditated violence to the perpetrator at large. Of course, the band comes from a different socio-economic background than I do, my collar is blue and theirs are white.

So they view the question as that of a trivial one, but I think it is precisely this life of privilege that many critics find fault with that hinders the ability of these boys to churn out some quality tunes.

If they could ill afford to be cheated in a transaction of this nature like the rest of us, then perhaps during the course of this song an intense dramatic narrative would enfold in which conflict is established, intensified, and resolved.

Yet, the chief fault I find with Vampire Weekend is that not a single member wears a cape; they don't even have a drum machine that does so, as one would expect.

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