You Can't See Your Dream

It seems as if every month is bringing a new legitimate album of the year contender. January and February brought Vampire Weekend and Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground's debuts, we skipped a month in March, and April brought us Tokyo Police Club and Flight of the Conchord's lead off LP's. All these newbies are totally showing up the wily veterans throughout the year.

Come May 13th though, all four of those neophytes are in some serious trouble. Why?

Death Cab for Cutie releases their sixth studio album Narrow Stairs that day (I don't count You Can Play These Songs With Chords), and it is absolutely the best album released so far this year.

As much as I love those other releases, this is Death Cab's best and most balanced album yet. This is coming from someone who loves the band, as they've put out some of my all-time favorite releases and would have to be considered one of my "favorite bands." From Something About Planes all the way to their most recent release Plans, I've loved all their albums (although I did get a late start, I didn't start listening to them until a little bit before 2003's Transatlanticism).

Death Cab for Cutie

With all that said, so far I've only announced that this is their best album yet. Why is it?

This album has the best balance of any of their full lengths to date. It's the most varied album they've ever released and it ends up coming up as the perfect mixture between the more guitar based rock of earlier albums like the Photo Album and the weighty piano ballads that frequented Plans. You listen to songs like "Bixby Canyon Bridge" or "Pity and Fear" and you start to think "man, these guys are really rocking!"

Honestly, when was the last time you ever listened to a song by Death Cab and thought that?

With that said, songs like "The Ice is Getting Thinner" and "Grapevine Fires" bring the ballads back into the picture. I'm not sure if this is due to the superior balance or the fact that these songs are simply better, but the emotional weight packed by these tracks cannot be underlined enough. Heartfelt, beautiful, haunting - these are recent year Death Cab at their best.

Then there are little curveballs within the album, like first single "I Will Possess Your Heart" and it's four and a half minute Ben Gibbard-less intro (Chris Walla kills it on this track with his brilliant bass line) or its' direct opposite track, minute and fifty nine second long showstopper "You Can Do Better Than Me." As of yet, that is my favorite track as it feels like a Thomas Newman composed track with Ben Gibbard laying in gorgeously triumphant and soulful lyrics on top of it.

As Gibbard croons out lyrics like "There's times I think of leaving, but it's something I'll never do/Because you can do better than me, but I can't do better than you," your heart simply breaks and you just want to reach into the music and say "no we can't Ben. No we can't."

I've listened to this album eight times through in the last day, and before this week is out I bet I listen to it at least eight times more. It gets better every time, just like Death Cab does.

Good luck music world, there's a new king on the throne. This one is going to be pretty hard to unseat. Can't wait to see them at Sasquatch!

Hype! (Or how Vampire Weekend learned to stop worrying and love to rock)

Vampire Weekend

Vampires love weekends.

Stay up late, sleep in, whatever.

They become people.

Thanks to Amy for my horrible affliction, my ridiculous obsession with these things called haiku's! Anyways, because I've been spouting them off every fifteen seconds for the past thirty minutes, it felt fitting to start my post with that (and I may even continue doing that, because they're so fun).

Back to the point, I know I'm really late to this party, but I finally caved and purchased Vampire Weekend's debut album (shockingly titled Vampire Weekend) after having it downloaded for a few weeks. After my unfathomably ahead of the curve and very cool Mom told me over and over to download it in December, I finally got around to it in February after the hype around the album became deafening.

I try not to give into hype too often because quite often, it isn't remotely earned and sometimes the music isn't even listenable, let alone buzzworthy. For every deserving artist like Sufjan Stevens or Interpol out there, there is a similar number of bands with undeserved hype behind them (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! I'm looking at you!). It isn't the bands fault...they don't create the hype (although some go out of their way to make it happen), but they do receive it when they hardly create what some would refer to as great music.

With Vampire Weekend though, simply put: the music is too good.

I had to buy into the hype.

The first hype band I really got behind were the Strokes when they released Is This It?, and Vampire Weekend's rapid ascension simultaneously on the Billboard Charts and within the eyes of the critical elite is eerily reminiscent of the Strokes very own experience.

Strangely enough, they tend to remind me of each other, not just in sound (obviously VW has a lot more of a reggae-ish feel, while the Strokes were the poster boys for the garage movement, but the central ideas are the same I feel), but in the fact that they both exhibit musical talent that translates well to eminently catchy and listenable music.

This is why I am in no way surprised that Vampire Weekend has found success, but also why I think that unlike some of their hype band contemporaries (I know this will be controversial, but Arcade Fire, I'm looking at you), they will find only more success on further ventures down the road. So long as they choose the right paths, and don't choose "growth" for the sake of growth, or just keeping the same sound to try to capture lightning in the bottle a second time. It's a tricky road, but I get the feeling these guys can handle it.

As for now, they have their hands full with what's clearly the best album so far this year (or last year to my Mom).