Amber Burg's Blog

Vampire Weekend. No I’m not talking about what Edward Cullen from Twilight does on weekends or what any sparkling blood sucking vampire does. In fact it’s a band, an American rock band that started in 2006 in New York City.

Their album, ‘Modern Vampire of the City,’ released worldwide on May 14, 2013 is classified as Indie Rock music. It’s a twelve-track album. It features the musical instruments guitar, multiple drums, bass guitar, piano, and even violin.  The band itself has been nominated for multiple Grammy Awards and has won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.

When the music first hit my ears, I was like yeah this is pretty good. The drumming pouring out of the headphones was abundant and spectacular. The drummer, Chris Tomson, made almost every song better with his rhythm and beats.  Out of the entire album, his work is what sticks out the most. He kept it upbeat in areas or drew my interest in for the first few stanzas before the lyrics started.

If I could just listen to their instrumental versions of the songs I would love this album. However, that version doesn’t exist, I checked.

The lyrics, voice, tone, and pitch bothered me the most throughout the tracks. There was multiple times where the lead vocalist’s voice, Ezra Koenig, drove me crazy. It was hard to make out what he was actually saying. At times it sounded like a high-pitched screech. It’s not just present in one song; the sound of his voice screeching is entwined throughout the album.

My ears withstood the sound of his voice for a few songs. However, when his voice mixed with an excessive amount of repeating lyrics in the songs, ‘Diane young’ and ‘Young Lion’ it drove me crazy.

‘Diane young’ gives Justin Bieber a run for his money with the unnecessary amounts of babys used. I honestly started off loving the sound of ‘Diane Young.’ It had a great beat and I could understand it. It was the ‘baby, baby, baby, baby right on time’ that I disliked. Don’t get me wrong, it was good, at first. The baby verse repeated multiple times in a row at different pitches with a touch of bad computer manipulation in parts. It made it hard to listen to because it was difficult to understand.

The ‘Young Lion’, just wow, it has six words. That’s it. If they would have removed those few words and left it as an instrumental, it would have been beautiful. The piano was astonishing lovely until the lyrics took over. Those six words were drawn out to last which was what made it unbearable. If they would of took the piano part and done something else besides sing ‘You take your time, young lion’ over and over it would have impressed me more.

Besides reiteration taking over the lyrics and phrases, I mentioned earlier having a hard time understanding what they were saying so I read the lyrics off the handy book that’s tucked into the CD case.  They are depressing. They all either have a negative look or talk about not being accepted by religion. Some people might be into that but it just wasn’t striking a hit with me. It definitely put a damper on a day.

Overall, I give it one and half stars.  The stars are for the instrumental parts without lyrics. I highly think that this band could be amazing if they made the singing understandable.

If you’re looking for a band where voices are hard to understand and some songs border on the line of depressing then this is your dream album. I would not recommend buying the whole CD. If anything I would recommend ‘Diane Young’ just because of its upbeat and drums but only if you can get past the baby repetition. Just make sure to listen before you buy.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2014 at 8:17 pm and is filed under Journalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.