Don't Let Vampire Weekend's Fans Deter You

Early during Sunday's Vampire Weekend set we sent a note to a friend asking, "Has KEXP frat-rock been coined a genre yet?" It was a half-flippant statement, based on the overly-enthusiastic fratty dudes standing to our left and the band's J. Crew ad appearance. In our more bitter days, we would have allowed those two factors to color our impression of the band and their output, but we'd already enjoyed Vampire Weekend's eponymous EP, so we quieted our inner hater (frat guys are people too) and judged the band on their own merits, not the hype, their appearance, or their audience. Sure, being impartial should go without saying, but if you're a long-time reader you know us bloggers are a fickle sort.

We're glad we gave the Columbia University quartet a fair chance. While the hype is certainly a bit much and we can definitely see this being played alongside crappier fare on some grassy quad as Abercrombie and Fitchers play a wicked game of ultimate, the fact is Vampire Weekend makes incredibly intelligent (a song about punctuation?), informed indie pop. The comparisons to Paul Simon ring truest to us, with the vocal stylings and odd world beat-ish rhythms, but you can also hear the influence of more modern indie rock as well. The end result is a familiar but fresh sound that's catchy as all hell, with plenty of crowd-friendly call and response and enough "ooooohs" to make it all fun. We were left with the impression that this is a band that's going to mark the intersection of our music collection and some Greek lettered individuals out there. And we're OK with that. So long as the music stays this engaging, we hope Vampire Weekend gets all the fans they can get.

Vampire Weekend's music can be heard on their MySpace page. They'll be playing Seattle again at The Crocodile on September 22nd (tickets).