Tuesday: My roommate mentions Vampire Weekend
Wednesday: Vampire Weekend shows up in my feed reader … everywhere. (see at right)
Thursday: Roommate buys CD. A friend’s Facebook status mentions the Vampire Weekend
Friday: I go to a show.

The HYPE
The Vampire Weekend’s hype is defeaning.  They are on every internet. 

Now I haven’t read many of the blog posts so perhaps somehow has already covered this question, but did they do anything to kick start the hype or is it just a lucky break?  Since the blogosphere is a telephone-game-echo-chamber of opinion, once a band passes the tipping point they’ll keep resonating (ie: look at this post) … but I’m curious if Vampire Weekend did something to start all this?  What was their secret sauce?

[sidenote: The hype hit reality with Vampire Weekend getting distributed at Target stores across the country at an $8.99 sale price on opening day.  That sort of distribution doesn’t happen without some serious justification.  I can just imagine the meeting between their label and Target executives as they’re shown charts of internet searches…]

On the non-cynical/skeptical side — on the side that believes it was just a lucky break — I’ll say that ‘Vampire Weekend’ - both their name and their music - is extremely catchy.  I was hooked the first time I heard ’Who the fuck needs an Oxford Comma?’

More on the music
I’ve been describing Vampire Weekend’s “sound” to be a more-poppy The Walkmen.  (Everytime I hear the first wail of Vampire Weekend’s ‘Mansard Roof’ I think I’m listening to The Walkmen…)  I find the drums and lyrics “nicely complicated” … and the occasional bursts of texture from the keyboards/guitar round things out nicely.  (I never seem to hear bass lines much so my lack of comment isn’t damning.)  I have no idea what the lyrics are about — but it doesn’t matter.

[sidenote: I looked up Oxford Comma. Interesting.  I use them.]

And on the concert
Vampire Weekend played on Thursday at Popscene … but I didn’t make it because of the rain.  Instead, I went to their free in-store show at Amoeba Music in the Haight on Friday.  I’d never been to a show at Amoeba and was pleasantly surprised.

Vampire Weekend played ~6 songs, including all of the stuff on their MySpace page that I was most familiar with.  The drummer had the most energy, singer was good, keyboards and bass were having fun but nothing special.

My only problem with the show was that the music was too up-beat to stand still to … but the tempo varied too much to really dance well to; I (and everyone else) just kind of tapped feet and nodded heads.  The music seems great for iPodding through the subway or working out at the gym … but what do you do when you hear it live?

Who knows?

p.s. Amoeba Music should eventually have some video from the show available. Until then, here’s a crappy cell phone picture I took:

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