Tomorrow it will be two years to the day since we charted the backlash to the then up-and-coming Vampire Weekend. Although we were wrong to hilariously predict that their second album would earn 1.3 stars on Pitchfork — the chart-topping Contra scored 8.6, which is .2 more than we would have awarded it — read this cranky new Chicago Reader review for a neat summing-up of the various elements of the backlash that did indeed come to pass. But what’s new? Vampire Weekend’s music, apparently, “bears the wounds of America’s crisis — it’s stocked with cheap imports, a bit too sure of itself, and trying to bullshit its way out of trouble.†That’s it, then — if you don’t listen to Vampire Weekend, the terrorists have won.
Appropriation, Vacation [Chicago Reader]