Seeing Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist a couple weeks ago made me remember my conflicted relationship with the band Vampire Weekend (for those of you who aren't total scenesters or don't ever read Pitchfork, Vampire Weekend contributed a song to the movie soundtrack). Vampire Weekend are for me one of those rare bands that you can't quite bring yourself to hate even though you know full well you should.
And, let's be straight here, there are plenty of reasons for me not to like this band. To begin with, there is the unabashedly pretentious ivy league image (the members of the band got together while in school at Columbia, dress for the most part like trust fund babies and have a nasty habit of name dropping in their lyrics). I won't pull a Sarah Palin and go so far as to call them elitist, but they pull off snob chic extremely well, seemingly without the slightest whiff of irony. To be blunt, they seem like total assholes.
Next, there's the sound. Vampire Weekend aren't about to win any awards for originality. Their entire debut album sounds like a shameless ripoff of Paul Simon's Graceland album, which itself was a ripoff of every Afro-pop record ever.
And yet, when I bought Vampire Weekend last Spring, it stayed in my car's cd player for close to a month. Something about its saccharine drenched sweetness appeals to some hidden part of my psyche. I cannot fully explain it.
Sure, it's catchy. And there is the occasional wit to be found in lyrics like "first the windows, then it's to the walls/ Lil' Jon, he always tells the truth." Yet none of that can seem to override my conscious desire to hate their music.
And that to me, is what makes it all so infuriating. Every inch of my being wants this music to be bad, and the fact that I like it just makes me sick. There are fewer things more frustrating than seeing someone you want to fall on their face succeed. It's like watching the bully who beat you up on the playground get into a better school than you and then get elected president. No matter how much you hate them, and how much of an asshole they may be, you can't ignore it when they do something worthwhile.
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