Vampires Will Never Hurt You

I didn’t want to like it.

Well, let me back up. I did want to like them. Any band with the name Vampire Weekend had to appeal to me, if for no other reason than my respect for the sexiest of supernatural beings. And their introduction to indie culture last summer came at a time when I was looking for a vampire reference every day. But I wanted them to be mine.

And, of course, they couldn’t be. A friend of mine knew one band member because they both worked for Teach for America. My indie label connection leaked gossip that the band was signing with XL, in the middle of a hush-hush bidding war. When I mentioned them to Eric Nuzum, vampire author extrordinaire, he told me he was already aware of them, and as I recall, he had known about them for long enough to not be a fan.

And the buzz grew from an avoidable fluorescent light hum to a fly in the ear of music fans and New Yorkers. Their EP circulated. Comparisons to Paul Simon's Graceland were shot back and forth until it stopped being an insightful note; it was fact. They played a show at Bowery Ballroom in January, posters for which were plastered across the city before Christmas. They kept showing up in brief articles in Spin and Rolling Stone. The Columbia grads were launched into that middle zone of fame – obscure enough to be too cool for the mainstream, and over-hyped to the indie scene.

So I wanted to reject it. I scoffed at the fans who started lining up at six for the band’s midnight CD release on Jan 29 -- a date that seemed to mean nothing since everyone had listened to the ten-song EP since July anyway. I expected them to flame out too fast. I expected them to be an over-buzzed indie darlings without any musical substance to back it up.

But I do really like their eponymous debut. Their short 2:00+ minute pop songs obviously hearken back to Graceland’s Afro beats, but a few of the yelps and guitar sounds remind me of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. It’s fun, happy music to beat the depressing winter chill (global warming and last week’s 57 degree high in New York aside). And the video for “A-Punk” is adorable.



For the record, Nuzum seemed to have a similar trajectory I did -- ambivalence, followed by adoration for the full-length.