Vampire Weekend - Walcott -- Vampire Weekend

Right now we'll be talking about an American indie rock quartet from New York. Vampire weekend is one of the best bands in the genre for the last few years with an excellent debut album, which will be talked about here. As well as a very good follow up album. Next month the third album will be out, and let me tell you I'm looking forward to it! On their official site (link below) you already have two new tracks you can listen to if you didn't already. Or you can just click these youtube links: Diane Young & Step. Both sound a bit strange to me, but I had the same with the Contra album and I ended up loving that one!

Anyways post is about their debut record that came out in early 2008 so lets talk a bit about that one. The self titled record contains hit singles on it like Mansard Roof, A-Punk and Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa and is characterized by fast paced indie pop rock with a lot of world music (sounds) mixed trough them. In general it's one of my favorite albums of the last 5 years, and probably of all time as well. The record doesn't contain a single bad track in my opinion and Ezra Koenig has such lovely and unique sounding vocals which makes the record even more brilliant. 

The song I chose to post is Walcott. It wasn't my favorite song on the record at the start but after seeing them twice live I absolutely love the song and it became my favorite song by Vampire Weekend in general. It's just brilliant how they bring it live combined with the atmosphere of the crowd, or at least at the gigs that I went to it was! The video is an acoustic/live version of both this song and of One as well. It's a video from a take away show they did for Lablogotheque. So enjoy and feel free to look forward with me to the new material!

Official site
last.fm artist page

BOAT -- Pretend To Be Brave (2013)

Right now I'll be talking about a Seattle based band, that has been active for quite a while. The Pretend To Be Brave is the 5th studio album since 2006 already. I honestly had no clue that there were any albums before the Dress Like Your Idols album from 2011. Above of that I always thought this band was French, don't know where I got these wrong assumptions but at least I read a bit about them before I started writing! 

BOAT is an Indie Rock band and the latest album isn't anything different. It starts off with Sharpshooters and Inside of an Aquarium which seem to be the better known songs by the last.fm community. Both are decent indie rock songs, but don't seem to stand out from so many other bands (like Built to Spill for example). It's an album that is worth to check out though, especially Hating The Criminal and The Big, The Bright are two songs I start to really like after three listens. But you'll have to listen a few times before you can start to really like them I'd say. It's easy to consider them good, but you'll easily forget about them because there isn't anything that makes them different. So I guess the biggest disadvantage this album has, is that it will be easily passed after a first listen because it isn't anything new under the sun. This comes along with a slight advantage though, if you like the genre you'll easily find yourself liking the band at a first listen and it will actually sound familiar in many ways although they are new songs. Anyways to conclude I would say that Pretend To Be Brave is a good Indie Rock album, especially after some extra listens you'll start to like it. I'd consider the band in general to be good as well both music wise and vocals. The Dress Like Your Idols album had the same problem as the Pretend To Be Brave one though. I knew I had it, I knew I liked it but beside the title song I couldn't remember any tune from it. So yes they are good, but nothing new. If you are looking for bands in this genre they are an excellent fit though.  

I don't think the album has any official video's so I'll be posting my favorite song by the band which is the Dress Like Your Idols song which is basically the only song I seemed to remember from the previous album. So I guess they have one song that stands out a bit. I left the song title out of the post's title because of the difference between the album I'm talking about and the album where the songs was taken from. Enjoy!

Official site 

last.fm artist page (second band)