Vampire Weekend

I'd like to apologize in advance if somewhere towards the end of this entry things stop making sense. Wednesday are my long days and I'm feeling the affects and so coherance isn't exactly the foremost thing in my mind. Getting my thoughts out are. So here they are.
As you can tell by the title, this entry is on a band called Vampire Weekend. I'm not easily impressed and if a band or singer is hyped to the extreme, especially in the blogosphere, chances are I'll be even less impressed if you're not extraordinarily talented. As an example; Kate Nash has been hyped by various media outlets since she first posted a song on MySpace. Everyone loves and having, until about a week, only heard snippets of her songs, I couldn't see what all the fuss was about. Then I got the chance to listen to her entire album, and I got it. The point though is, if you don't have a song that can immediatly grab me, even and semi-conscious state, there's no hope for you in my opinion.
So, Vampire Weekend. Since almost a year ago people have been going ga-ga over this group from Columbia (don't get me started on the whole Ivy League bullshit) and since I mainly listen to LPs and not internet downloads of demos, I didn't understand what all the fuss was about. In fact I kind of ignored everyone's drooling because there have been a lot of one hit wonders who got fabulous reviews on the outset. Anyway, Vampire Weekend's debut album was released yesterday and, in a semi-conscious state, I gave the album a spin. My immediate thought was that Paul Simon should sue the lead singer for copyright infringement because the two sound so much a like. My next thought was that Paul Simon should sue the whole band for copyright infringement because the band seemed to have based their entire album on his 1973 album There Goes Rhymin'Simon (which I had to listen to extensively when I was a child). This isn't to say they aren't good. They're a good solid band. All I'm saying is that the mass amounts of praise that this band has garnered over the past year isn't entirely deserved. Over at Good Weather for Air Strikes, writer Derek has already basically declared it the album of 2008. The only review of the album that seems at all realistic (at least in my little world of online criticism) is the AV Club who gave the album a B-. Everyone else seems to think that this album is the best thing since sliced bread, which, in my opinion, just isn't true. A good debut does not mean genius and all of these brilliant reviews are just setting the band up for failure when they get around to their sophomore album.
To sum up: Vampire Weekend is a fairly good album that owes a hell of a lot to Paul Simon and people need to calm down about this band.
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3 Days till OK Go