Monday 12.03.07: VAMPIRE WEEKEND

Vampire Weekend || Listen

Fans describing Vampire Weekend often mention “Graceland” — the album, not the estate. It’s an inexact reference point, but an effective one, evoking 1980s nostalgia (it’s getting harder to find people who pretend to dislike that Paul Simon masterpiece) and an unfussy approach to Afro-pop. On Saturday the band members laid down a series of playful indie-rock grooves: plinky keyboards and spidery guitar lines, rattling drums and nudging bass. One of the band’s best-loved songs, “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,” seems to evoke the pleasant confusion of making out, or not making out:

Can you stay up to see the dawn,
in the colors of Benetton?
Is your bed made? Is your sweater off?
Do you want to? Like you know I do?

The title makes reference to Congolese soukous music, and so does Mr. Koenig’s guitar figure. But if fans can’t tell exactly what has been borrowed from where, that’s part of the point. And in the refrain Mr. Koenig name-checks the guy who helped make so-called world music a genre unto itself, singing, “This feels so unnatural/Peter Gabriel too.” The band members all attended Columbia (online they claim to be specialists in “Upper West Side Soweto,” among other styles), and something about their preppie, polyrhythmic sound feels fresh and funny and, weirdly, inevitable. Instead of borrowing from early Talking Heads albums (the way Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and many other bands have done), they’re borrowing from Afro-pop, just as Talking Heads did on later albums. In retrospect it’s a brilliantly well-timed approach.

with:
Grand Ole’ Party
Princeton || Listen

8:30pm / $10 / 18+