Vampire Weekend “Horchata”
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
A few things about this
1) Not to get all punny on the SoCal vibe they’re reaching for here, but “Horchata” really jumps with both feet into The Ocean That Is Everything Haters Hated About Vampire Weekend the first time around. And for that, good for them. The “horchata”/”balaklava” rhyme scheme in particular seems like it was devised purely to dangle in front of anyone who might have called them privileged cultural tourists last time around. In other words, I doubt Ezra Koenig would have used “rice milk” and “ski mask” to evoke his balmy surroundings if they didn’t happen to rhyme when translated into different languages. I wrote a while back about how I thought “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” was pretty slick–smug, depending on my mood–little pre-emptive shush to anyone who might think he was unaware of exactly what he was doing (this is what happens when that’s the case).
2) All of the above, I think, is nicely contextualized by the interview Koenig gave P4K’s Ryan Dombal the other day. The key thing with that piece, brief as it is, is Koenig’s refusal to kowtow to the prevailing punk ethos that still pervades American indie music, and purposeful attempt to counter it by writing songs about “first world problems.” And yes, a crab biting your sandal is the “blew out my flip-flop/stepped on a pop-top” of indie pop.
3) I’ve still, perhaps ridiculously, never seen Repo Man, so I can’t write anything profound about Koenig’s affinity for that film. Is that awful?
4) Does the xylophone providing the verse melody remind anyone else of “Walking on Broken Glass“? (Also, is that the “House” guy at the very beginning of that video?)