Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend

One of the most compelling draws to this year's Lollapalooza festival is the foursome known as Vampire Weekend. They've cultivated a wide appeal despite--or perhaps in light of--their elite literati pedigree. The boys started gigging around 2006 in their last undergraduate year at Columbia University, starting off at humanities societies and parties. With that kind of foundation, you'd think the emphasis would be on explorations primarily invested in lyric, to which their freshman album track "Oxford Comma" is certainly a tribute. But really, the performative experience Vampire Weekend cultivates is an affective one rather than hyper-intellectual or hyper-referential--the result seemingly bringing the hipster, the geek, and the downright adorkable all a little closer together.

Describing their sound as "Upper West Side Soweto," Ezra Koenig, Chris Baio, Rostam Batmanglij, and Chris Tomson mix well-read indie melodies with joyful, Afro-pop-inspired rhythms. Their first album, Vampire Weekend (2008), was a smash in the alternative scene and appealed to a sophisticated collegiate crowd. The rather specific age demographic (as I can't imagine folks in their 30s and 40s interested in titles like "Campus") was noted by some critics, but the Afro-pop sedimentation of the bass lines were without rebuke.

Their second album, Contra (2010), slows down the pace and is invested in blending influences rather than downright mixing, sacrificing some of the blazing guitar proficiency of the earlier album for thoughtfulness; it's worth it for tracks like "Horchata" and "I Think Ur A Contra." And this past May, the band released their third studio album, Modern Vampires of the City (2013), which quickly reached no. 1 on several charts. With many positive reviews, Vampire Weekend seems to be finding a balance between its popular and independent streaks.

To get a sense of what I mean by this doubleness in Vampire Weekend's discography, I recommend comparing these two tracks from their first and second album respectively: "A Punk" and "I Think Ur A Contra."

As I mentioned, "A Punk" belongs on your jogging mix for its bounce and speed that infects your ear. Brief and simple, its bounce and play with arpeggio as a technique makes it very satisfying when on repeat. Similarly, the vibrato alto flute lines are a strikingly different sound in light of the larger synthesized sounds of contemporary indie pop.

"I Think Ur a Contra" is slow; it shimmers, and it very gradually envelops and develops through the sweet upper range of Keonig's voice. There is a strikingly low bass line from the piano (rather than a keyboard), with other elements subtly slipping in suggesting that the speaker grows from thinking to knowing his subject is in fact, a contra(diction).

The single from their new album getting radio play right now, "Diane Young," while far more electric than I anticipated, seems to nicely split the difference. Considering the new album comes only two months before Lollapalooza, I anticipate they have big plans for their Chicago crowd.

Can't get enough? Stream this expertly recorded live concert from NPR. Or check out another act on the same label, Ra Ra Riot, which has been inching into the limelight but is extremely underrated as yet.

Prepare for Vampire Weekend's 6:30pm set on Sunday, August 4th, at the Bud Light stage by checking out their music, available from iTunes and streaming on Spotify.

--Elizabeth Tavares

The Postal Service: Live in Boston

The Postal Service

Without The Postal Service I am not sure we would have Death Cab for Cutie, and without Death Cab there certainly wouldn't have been the other. A collaboration between electronica whiz Jimmy Tamborello and DCFC frontman Ben Gibbard, The Postal Service was named for the courier service that allowed the duo to trade song ideas. While they did pepper radio stations with three trim EPs at the backend of the '00s, the group is a one-album wonder. In early 2003 they released Give Up, spawning five major radio hits and breaking independent label sales records under the auspices of Sub Pop. (Think Nirvana.)

In the last few months the duo released a deluxe remaster of Give Up as a 10th anniversary edition, more than doubling the original ten-track set list. It is unclear whether the two are putting the nail in the coffin on their collaboration, as they are making the rounds at all the large festivals touring the album--a trip that is also helpfully touting Gibbard's recent solo project Recent Lives (2012). They were one of the most anticipated acts of this year's Coachella festival, many betting that this may very well be the last chance to hear the pair perform live. Below is their full performance this past June in Boston. (It's a fan video, so the quality isn't fantastic, but his or her constancy in filming the entire concert is to be admired).

In terms of synthetic production values, it is difficult to quantify the duo's influence. The album was an immediate success in both indie and mainstream circuits. It walked that fine line between the elite and popular--a line to which very few can successfully cater. I think DCFC does so to varying degrees, but Radiohead might be the epitome of walking that fine line, all the more with their new side project, Atoms for Peace.

For its part, The Postal Service provides a hinge not only for its members, but also for alternative pop in general. You can certainly hear the band's shimmering textures, instrumentation, and predisposition for vocal layers in DCFC's breakthrough, Transatlanticism (2003). Give Up also seemed to signal a period of transition out of "indie emo" acts like Blink 182 and My Bloody Valentine, making room for the likes of Spoon, Vampire Weekend, Arcade Fire, Iron & Wine, and Phoenix--many of whom are festival regulars.

I am likely overstating and oversimplifying the network of influence here, but these groups seem to be part of a movement early in the last decade where spinning and pre-fabricated samples were becoming increasingly amenable to the live venue.

Perhaps the two tracks from Give Up that best articulate the synthesis between analog and pre-fab sound production is the ubiquitous "Such Great Heights" and "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" (at 50:55 and 00:00, respectively, in the full concert video above). The former has been sampled, covered, and remixed unendingly since its initial release. (I do believe a couple covered it for my high school's talent show one year.) Some of my favorites include versions by Feist, Iron & Wine, and particularly Ben Folds, who deploys spoons and Altoids canisters to replicate some of the effects.

Despite the gossamer production of smoothly syncopated kit work and iterative leggato guitars, the lyric themes behind both tracks are morally dark and left unresolved in the narrative lines. This is true of much of DCFC's music as it is for The Postal Service: Both seem invested in studies of contrast where songs of hope take up an emotionally plumbing musicality (see "St. Peter's Cathedral") while anthems to youth are lyrically invested in the close kinship between love and death, joy and despair. Their live performance, such as that embedded above, is a good example. Band mates work hard to get an audience clapping and singing along to their biggest hit whose topic just happens to be suicide.

I point out the juxtapositional pairings of theme and tenor not to suggest the naivete of festival-goers--a claim they are often unfairly stamped with as festivals themselves become increasingly corporatized--but rather to indicate the immense success and staying power of an act invested in challenging their listeners with unsettling yet stunning paradoxes.

Prepare for The Postal Service's 8:30pm set on Saturday, August 3rd, at the Bud Light stage by checking out their music, available from iTunes and streaming on Spotify.

--Elizabeth Tavares

Heartless Bastards: "Into Love"

Lolla starts tomorrow. To get you ready, Daijams is posting three artist reviews--one at 10am, one at noon, one at 2pm--all written by the knowledgeable, music-loving, deadline-observing Liz Tavares.

Heartless Bastards

Erika Wennerstrom is the indie scene's answer to Bonnie Raitt and Sheryl Crow. Her blues vocals front her band, Heartless Bastards, with that same timeless quality especially indicative of Raitt: It doesn't suggest a particular historical moment and obfuscates the age of the singer, certainly. It fits the mood, always.

As a female singer in the current market, I imagine it has been difficult for Wennerstrom not to trade on her gender, pouting up a sweetness as in She & Him, depending on sex appeal such as Ke$ha, or unraveling her gendered markers altogether in a way that brands acts like Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. My apologies for all of the name-dropping, but Wennerstrom--supported by Dave Colvin, Jesse Ebaugh, and Mark Nathan--doesn't seem invested in crafting anything other than a fat rock sound. And with the preponderance of "indie" and "alternative" acts, rock is a terrain left relatively untended.

Those who are invested in the development of the rock genre are, however, not to be trifled with--and the Heartless Bastards are often lumped in among them. Their first studio albums were produced by Fat Possum Records, the same label as fellow Ohioans The Black Keys, to whom they are often compared. Rolling Stone is fond of linking the band with Spoon and the White Stripes as well as some of the top rock acts of the past decade.

Despite hailing from Ohio, the rambling pace of their tunes suggest the Great Wide West--songs that don't even attempt to hover around the industry benchmark of two to three-and-a-half minutes. I first heard them at Lollapalooza in 2009. And their second of four studio albums, All This Time (2006), was the soundtrack to the rest of that year. This year at Lollapalooza, there are no major garage, blues, or professedly rock acts, so Heartless Bastards seem to be tasked in filling a large gap mid-festival in late Saturday afternoon leading up to two experimental hip-hop/rap groups. A tall order indeed.

The Bastards most recent release is last year's Arrow (2012), which attempts to capitalize on their western prairie aesthetic. And it is lovely, if a bit over-produced--but that's the trend these days. For this album I recommend "Skin and Bone" and "Parted Ways."

However, it is 2006's All This Time to which I continually return as a touchstone of their particular sound. If you are new to the band, start with "All This Time" and then "Searching for Ghosts." In the first, the driving warm guitar lines are fat and catchy as Wennerstrom lopes through a melodic lines. Her enunciation of "I love you so much baby" is snark and barely timbered with a blues growl that she never lets get the better of her. "Searching for Ghosts," on the other hand, is plaintive and companionate, strung with close harmonies shared between band mates. The deceptively simple guitar line sucks you in and then suddenly gains a grizzled texture at the bridge. Unlike the blues-rock tradition, these songs don't take heartbreak as a theme, but are rather appeals to hearts full of wanderlust. Nevertheless, they will break your heart.

Prepare for Heartless Bastard's 6pm set on Saturday, August 3rd, at the Grove stage by checking out their music, available from iTunes and streaming on Spotify.

--Elizabeth Tavares