Vampire Weekend — “Horchata” (by mab24pred)
here comes a feeling you thought you’d forgotten…
I haven’t listened to the new Vampire Weekend yet (although I’ve got it), partly because the singles have mostly left me cold (although “Step” has grown on me a little), partly because I’ve been irrationally annoyed at how people who like the new one talk about Contra (although that isn’t exactly the new album’s fault).
While I don’t believe in guilty pleasures, I guess you could say my closest equivalent would be indefensible pleasures; things that I viscerally enjoy where I can’t deny (and/or have no interest in denying) the truth of others’ harshest criticisms. For somebody like me, one impulse when it comes to a band like Vampire Weekend would be to emphasize or focus on the differences in our backgrounds; but realistically, the similarities are so much greater that it’d be disingenuous to pretend the political/aesthetic critiques don’t sting at least partly because I’m implicated in them too. From my (privileged) position it’s easy to focus on nuance and grace notes, tease out the ways in which Ezra Koenig is as much satirist as champion, and so on. But none of that deflects (or is trying to deflect, at least here) the very real problems or drawbacks of the band’s milieu and approach.
So I wind up listening to Contra as much for the ways it troubles me and makes me think about those issues as for the genuine visceral enjoyment it gives me. And if I’m out walking on a sunny day, in a good mood, this is one of the songs that’s most likely to pop into my head. I’m not ready to write an essay on the politics of that (and I’m not sure the world would be improved if I ever did write one), but all I can say is that they’re always on my mind when it does.
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