Some bands are born by the blog, and so may they hopefully die by the blog. Vampire Weekend is one of the most recent blog children, along with Panic! at the Disco. Oh wait, make that Panic at the Disco- because removing an exclamation point makes you seem so mature and focused on the important issues. But I digress- Vampire Weekend is nothing more than a novelty employing foreign styles of music that would be better experienced by listening to authentic representations of the cultures. Their eclectic mix of styles ends up being repetitive on many tracks, and never really reaches the fullest potential of any one style, making them an average band that hit gold on the internet.
What truly boggles the mind is that a respected and established magazine such as SPIN would tout the band on its front cover with the caption “The Year’s Best New Band…Already!?” I don’t know about you, but that is a pretty tall order with nine months ahead, especially for a band that has minimal, if any, radio play in my area and no hit single as of yet.
On a broader scale, Vampire Weekend represents an ongoing problem in the music industry, namely the creation of a band through corporately constructed hype based on the recommendation of a few bloggers who heard a recording. The result is a band that releases an overproduced record that they are completely unable to replicate live (I saw Panic live, it wasn’t pretty). It also compresses the development period of the band itself from the traditional years to mere months, not long enough to “weed out” bands that have no potential longevity.
The real test for blog bands will come with the release of “Pretty. Odd.”, though I personally found Panic’s first release much more worthwhile than Vampire’s.
