Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

I feel that you have to approach any band who name a song after a grammatical construction with extreme caution. When songs start to veer away from topics of love and pain and into the realms of english language advice where will it lead? Thankfully, following the success of 'Oxford Comma', there has not been a surge in grammatically correct pop songs nor has there been a campaign to correct those hits whose use of correct english have been suspect. Imagine what damage could be done if grammatical pedants had their way. 'Gimme Some Lovin' becomes 'Do you think it would be possible for you to give me some loving?', 'Ain't No Sunshine' would transform into the less emotive 'Actually it is rather cloudy don't you think?' and don't get me started on 'Coz I Love You'. And then there is the increasing use of popular text speak in song titles. I personally blame Prince....for a lot of things really. But I digress.....

So when someone in work recommended that I check out Vampire Weekend I was initially skeptical as I knew that they were a bit 'preppy' and had the damn faced cheek to be much younger than me. What could they teach me about anything? (Actually it's funny - as I've opened this blog with a mini-tirade about grammar I am surprisingly very conscious of how I construct this blog). Anyway this wasn't really a problem when I first started to listen to music as most musicians were much older - anything they sung about obviously came from a place of great knowledge. I seemed to overlook the fact that even my beloved Beatles were only in their twenties when they started writing great pop songs. I doesn't seem to matter as much that the likes of Michael Stipe, John Lennon and Paul Weller were younger than I am now when they wrote their first songs. If you know what I mean.

But Vampire Weekend's debut album is so joyous and catchy that all these doubts soon disappeared. By the time I was halfway into my first listen I was already making favourable comparisons to XTC, Talking Heads and The Police. I don't think this will have the longevity of those greats of popular music in my affections, but for the time being I will enjoy it for what it is; a great pop album written by some very talented musicians. A great mixture of punk, new wave and African rhythms. Check out 'Mansard Roof' and 'M79' if you doubt me. Oh and if you are interested, I don't think that an Oxford Comma should be used - it just looks odd!