Vampire Weekend

NEW MOON

Vampire Weekend play more than just the hits

Nearly All the Big Acts Playing Lollapalooza 2013 Have Played Lollapalooza Before

Thanks to Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune, Lollapalooza's headliners have been revealed, and it appears that Perry Farrell & Co. are dipping into the past few years of the Chicago-based festival's lineup history for a little inspiration. Mumford & Sons, Vampire Weekend, Phoenix, and the Killers have ... More >>

Farewell, MTK Music Festival, We Hardly Knew Ye

Sorry guys.​What is it about Long Island and its inability to let multi-day music festivals blossom? Today organizers of the MTK Music Festival—the fashion-forward, Vampire Weekend-headlined event scheduled for next weekend at the East Hampton Airport—announced that they'd pulled t ... More >>

Zach Baron's Top 10 Albums of 2010

Guess who? Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.​Alright, let's do this, before I change my mind. With apologies to The-Dream, Sleigh Bells, Ted Leo, Kylesa, Swans, Zola Jesus, Marnie Stern, and all other vestiges of my punk rock past, and especially you Nicki Minaj, who missed both of my lists this year. ... More >>

Sufjan Stevens's The Age of Adz Is the #7 Record In the Country Right Now

Hail your new leader, America.​"We try not to think too much about the Billboard charts," Asthmatic Kitty's Michael Kaufmann told us last week, when we asked him about the label's sales expectations for Sufjan Stevens's newly released Age of Adz. Maybe not, but the label was also straightforwa ... More >>

Week in Review: Apollo Kids

​In the week one of this blog's authors inspired a short play about juggalo zombies and Lady Gaga, we celebrated by announcing the 2010 Village Voice/Redeye Distribution Day Party, featuring the great Marnie Stern, Hooray For Earth, and a bunch of others, including a wonderful special secret g ... More >>

Kanye West And Nicki Minaj Are Putting Out New Records In The Same Week, For Some Reason

​​And so it came to pass that the two most anticipated hip-hop albums of the fall will be released 24 hours apart, if their respective voluminous Twitter accounts are to be believed, and given the airtight rapper/Twitter double helix these days, why wouldn't you believe them. From an inc ... More >>

Week In Review: Kill Harvilla, But Get Belly To Reunite First

​It was the week White America lost its mind, as did the guy who wrote a song called "Kill Harvilla" and sent us both the lyrics (not bad) and the instrumental MP3 (very bad). But we here at SOTC prefer more constructive exercises, like listing every '90s band that hasn't reunited yet. A lot o ... More >>

Ra Ra Riot

A Brief History of So-Called "Dirty Words" in Indie-Rock

Are these kids at a Phish show or an Animal Collective show? You'll never know. Photo by Max Herman. ​Over the weekend, the Washington Post suggested that a shift was underway in the indie-rock community. As the headline went: "For indie rockers, 'jam band' increasingly no longer a shameful te ... More >>

Fox News vs. Hipsters: A First-Rate Lesson in Hate Speech

​Fox News decided to publish an editorial on "hipsters" or what they think they know "hipsters" are, entitled, "The Trouble With Hipsters," written by a Hopefully you've landed here and will not read the actual article. That said, given that Fox News's broad outlook still sees President Obama ... More >>

Week in Review: Female Guitar Players Are the New Black

The beach is in Bed-Stuy, suckers. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.​In the week we asked a Georgia-certified divorce attorney whether The-Dream had left his wife while she was eight and a half months pregnant because he would have had to pay more child support had he waited the full nine (or was it ju ... More >>

Against Me! Make Their Blue Album

White Crosses revels in the suddenly anomalous thrills of power chords

Last Night: Stephen Colbert Insults Vampire Weekend's Personal Hygiene

It's true, local swells Vampire Weekend were looking a little ragged on Stephen Colbert's television show last night, but that was no call for him to tell kindly VW drummer Chris Thomson that his hygiene level reminded Colbert of the notoriously unwashed teen star (and sometime Twilight vampire) R ... More >>

Evidence That Viral-to-Street Promotion Works: Vampire Weekend Contra Edition

photo by Nate "Igor" Smith Meet Chris. He's on the right. Chris writes graf. Chris went to Hoodstock. And Chris was photographed on Wednesday, repping Vampire Weekend at the Knitting Factory Knifefight: No Rules screening party. So when we saw him the next night at the Ninjasonik art show, wearing ... More >>

Week in Review: Uniformly Awful

In yr face. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne​In the week the world learned how dangerous a truffle-flavored french fry really can be, we watched in horror as the New York Times Magazine penned a brutal takedown of M.I.A.--who retaliated by going after the journalist who wrote it, of course. Were you pe ... More >>

Week in Review: Michael Bolton is... JACK THE RIPPER!

Hey look, it's Michael Bolton. Photo by the intrepid Rob Harvilla.​In the week we attended a cocktail party at Michael Bolton's house, we learned that the god has a Kanye platinum plaque on his wall and the finest Scrabble board Toys R Us sells on his mantle. Our guided tour of New York's most ... More >>

Welcome to the Mixed-Up, Dialed-Down 2010 Whitney Biennial

Bye-bye bling! The new realists win out this year

OUT OF AFRICA

Tinariwen rock it desert-style

So Was Lil Wayne's Rebirth a Modest Success Or a Total Commercial Failure? Maura Johnston Reads the Charts

"Billboard's 'Tastemakers' chart is the one we should all paying attention to, don't you think?"​This week's Billboard 200 is headed once again by Lady Antebellum, the milquetoast country trio whose second album Need You Now moved 481,000 copies in its debut week, and 209,000 copies in the sal ... More >>

Indie Takeover Wednesdays Continues with the Scandalous Vice/Sub Pop Partnership with CNN

​So Vampire Weekend has the number one record in the country, and now Vice's VBS.TV will claim a prominent spot on CNN's website, presumably somewhere near the Indie Asia: On Tour With the Handsome Furs Sub Pop-produced travel featurette CNN is already hosting. Insert scandalized, risque refer ... More >>

The Times Mentioned Fucked Up Without Actually Printing Their Name Again

Rebecca SmeyneWhat a day that was​From a weekend profile of the perhaps slightly overexposed Vampire Weekend, detailing Ezra Koenig's improbable appearance at FU's late-2008 Rogan Store debacle:

Photos: Yummy Fur at the Market Hotel, The Beets at St. James Church, Underscore Quarterly Release Party at the Silent Barn

all photos by Rebecca SmeyneLess Artists More Condos show at St. James Church in Chinatown Those of us blessed with a long weekend had plenty to do with it. Like see Julian Casablancas at Terminal 5, take in Vampire Weekend's "emotionally grueling" marathon at the United Palace Theater, watch Gasli ... More >>

THE TWILIGHT HOUR

Don't forget your cardigan

Week in Review: Let Us Soak in Positive Forces

New Year's Eve...no idea, basically. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.​In the week we learned that Animal Collective's manager is apparently endowed with a baby leg, in the one dark place where that would be a meaningful statement, we did our best to otherwise cleanse the ol' SOTC soul, apologizing to ... More >>

This Week in the Voice

​Ha ha, Mike Bloomberg and Bill Thompson as Oscar and Felix! But as it's by Wayne Barrett, you know it's not a cheap joke: It's about their day jobs as Mayor and Comptroller, the funding for the Museum for African Art led by Thompson's wife, and the propriety of a candidate challenging, with h ... More >>

Say Goodbye to 2009: Looking Back at the Year in Concerts

Last year's Stupid Party in Crown Heights. All photos by Rebecca Smeyne.​We're closing up shop early today, and getting a head start on the New Year by doing snow angels outside for a while. Last minute guidance on your own New Year's Eve plans can be found here and here. In the meantime, plea ... More >>

"World's First Steampunk Bar" On the Verge of Bringing Live Music to Prospect Heights

Way Station interior image via​Well, assuming they get their liquor license--a big if. Washington Avenue's Way Station is poised to open as a regular music venue in the largely venue-less Prospect Heights zone, reports the Brooklyn Paper, but basically can't until the city grants the bar a liq ... More >>

Week in Review: Like a Sexy Swedish Chick in a Natural Mineral Sauna

Yup, this photo was taken in 2009, by Rebecca Smeyne​In the week Chuck Schumer became a bike-riding, Williamsburg Pool Party-saving hipster man of the people, we roamed far and wide over his most precious borough, from an Obama Fried Chicken in Brownsville to the very likely defunct N8 to the ... More >>

BLOOD SUCKERS

We're into biting, but a support group for vampires? Come on!

Week in Review: Or Whatever's Left of Her

Your guess is as good as ours. Photo by Nate "Igor" Smith​In the week we ran all over town looking for a headless pop star (and found her, hiding out in the Barnes and Noble Union Square magazine section), we also hailed the non-headless pop-stars-in-the-making Girls at their New York coronati ... More >>

Week in Review: The F. Scott Fitzgerald of American Indie Rock

Photo of South Williamsburg's the Woods by Puja Patel​In the week in which everyone went to rock and roll fantasy camp--whether it be the one that takes place inside the Colbert Report studios with the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle or the one that takes place on the disco dance floor with Vin ... More >>

News Roundup: Vampire Weekend Comment Bombs, Sonic Youth, Public Enemy, LCD Soundsystem

​--The free download of Vampire Weekend's new track "Horchata" has shaken the dust off the intractable divides between the army of anons. Over at Brooklyn Vegan, we see college students ("The F. Scott Fitzgerald of American Indie Rock") pitted against college students ("...it's like the whiffe ... More >>

Week in Review: ZOWEE

Photo of Ida Maria plus models by David Wentworth.​In the week "I'mma Let You Finish" became the new "WAZZUP!" (see how well that one aged!), we leaned back, helpless as the Maxwell Man (our references are old today, huh?) as Kanye annihilated his own website and the hopes and dreams of a 19-y ... More >>

Live: Islands and, Yes, Das Racist at Bell House

Talking trash at Siren 2008, courtesy of Idolator Islands/Das Racist Bell House Wednesday, August 19 Nick Diamonds emerges in a sparkly cape, which gets me to wondering if anyone other than James Brown will ever be capable of wearing a sparkly cape unironically, but with Islands this is the wrong ... More >>

Suggestions For A Beastie Boys Tribute On Friday at All Points West

So the Beasties aren't playing All Points West, and in their place Jay-Z is playing All Points West, and if that's not an even trade, musically speaking, then who knows what an even trade is, really. But parotid cancer is a grim diagnosis, and the Beastie Boys are the home team, and so it seems li ... More >>

Week in Review: "I Am the Best Filmmaker in the World."

Nate "Igor" SmithFun times at Roxy Cottontail's party. This is what Zach's birthday dinner looked like too. In the week that both Zach and Roxy Cottontail celebrated their birthdays, Rob posted a great moment in Wu-based subway-ad vandalism that became a whole shitload of peoples' Facebook profile ... More >>

Wanna Read the Most Awkward Vampire Weekend Interview Ever?

Conducted at the Happy Ending after-party two weeks ago by the New York Press: Hi Ezra. "Do I know you from somewhere? You look familiar." We went to college together. "Oh, yeah. You've changed your style since then, wouldn't you say?" I guess I used to be a bit more Goth. "You're still ki ... More >>

New Asobi Seksu Video, O'Death Mixtape, and Tonight's Brooklyn Vs. Baltimore Show Was Moved

Sound of the City roots for the home team and so does Impose Magazine's Jeremy Krinsley. Impose is having a birthday party show on Saturday at Cake Shop. It's free if you were born in January. O'Death mixtape. Unfortunately this doesn't include yodeling diss tracks aimed at Akron/Family. On that ... More >>

Janelle, Erykah, and Santogold Are the Afro-Techno Revolution

While Beyoncé just struggles to keep up

Lykke Li+Wildbirds & Peacedrums

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist: About A Boy, and Not Much Else

No Age Rides the Zeitgeist

The Obligatory Coachella Photo Post

Saturday

No Context: Crystal Castles, Ripsters at Studio B

SXSW: The Constantines

Status Ain't Hood Podcast 20

Status Ain't Hood Podcast 5