For some reason or another, I have fallen into a Vampire Weekend rabbit hole recently. I know I might be getting a little old for that, but hey, I can’t help it. Even if I don’t cuff my pants anymore, there’s no escaping the indie kid within me. At first, I was not sure exactly what sparked this revival in my interest, cause I’ve been familiar with the band for many years now. With some thought, I came to the conclusion that it was being back at OSU that had me listening to so much VW. There was something about being back on a college campus that called for a Vampire Weekend soundtrack. As I hit the second week of immersing myself in college life, backed by Vampire Weekend, I started to think, is Vampire Weekend the most “college” album…ever? I think it might be.
Everyone knows about the persona associated with VW. Preppy, Ivy League, hipsters with old money who have urbane personalities and high-brow interests. Millennial cafe-goers in metropolitan areas who want to be socially progressive, though they’ve only ever had white friends. Kombucha-drinking liberal fathers who always went to DIY shows in college. This list goes on. Hell, even when I asked AI to generate me a quintessential VW fan, it generated a white guy in a flannel with tortoiseshell glasses and a scarf. Fuckin’ hipster!
Nonetheless, it’s true that the band’s fan base adopted the look of New York college kids in the early to mid-2000s. This is because that’s how the band presented themselves. The band were college students at the time of recording, and that played a huge role in the persona of “Vampire Weekend” and the subsequent fan base they attracted. Columbia University is known for economics, political science, and business management; seeing these artsy kids making indie pop at one of the most prestigious schools in the country was refreshing and appealing. It also just so happened that the said indie pop was some of the best American music being made at the time.
Even if we only looked at the lyrics, Vampire Weekend could still be the quintessential college album. The very first lyrics of the album are “I see a mansard roof through the trees.” If that doesn’t bring up an image of walking across a university quad on a sunny day and seeing a centuries-old lecture hall, I don’t know what does. Of course, later in the song, there are references to a historical war to make sure the song was up to the VW level of ostentatiousness. “Oxford comma” rambles on about grammatical opinions, English dramas, and indian culture. “A-Punk” is scattered with references to New York geography. Of course, there are classic love songs, but even these are scattered with literary references, pop culture remarks, comments on foreign lands, and indie taglines. Of course, I have to mention “Campus,” the acme of collegiate representation in my opinion. In this song, Koenig really pins down the hangovers, short-lived romances, and “cruel professors” that you only ever encounter during your college years. He’s able to capture the era of being a college student so perfectly because of these specific experiences that he himself was living through. Even bringing up things like “ion displacement” makes the album sound like a casual conversation you have with someone you see in class a couple of times a week.
It’s not even just these overt references to college, like on “Campus” or “Oxford Comma,” that make this album feel so college-like; it even comes down to very minute things. Things that subconsciously contributed to this “college” sound in my mind, and took an almost psychoanalytic listening of “Vampire Weekend” to understand why I believe it to be the ‘most college album ever’. Take the drums, for example. While complex enough to show true musical talent, yet they are strange enough to have an adolescent, light-hearted sound. They define that awkward period in between being a kid and banging on the drumset and being an adult who is conformed to 4/4 beats. It’s a feeling that could only come from a younger band. Or we could look at the orchestral arrangements. They are not complex, multilayered compositions, but melodic layers with only a few stringed instruments. It is reminiscent of a university ensemble group playing in a recital hall. It seems like all of the songs carry this feeling of being young and hungry; being at a time in your life where life is new and exciting, and it’s still fun to try new things.
Even the album cover contributes to this spirit of college life. The chandelier always reminded me of a trust fund frat party, and with a little research, I learned that’s kind of exactly what it was. It was taken at the literary fraternity Delta Psi in Columbia. This album really couldn’t get any more pretentious if it tried. Even so, it is a perfect display of the incongruence of college. The fact that everyone is transitioning into professional, adult life, but are still young people at heart. It captures the transition to a new dimension of life that would have been incomprehensible to imagine just ten years before. They found what was so special about college, that duality between reckless living and professional studies, and bottled it up into one of the best indie albums ever.
Finishing this album feels like getting back to your dorm after a Friday of classes followed by a rowdy night in a crowded basement. And you have an eclectic knowledge of oriental culture. And you have rich parents. And you know about Dimes Square and The Delancey. It’s a celebration of maturity and intelligence without the sacrifice of debauchery adolescence. The band shows the value in embracing an early age and displays the qualities that make that period of living so beautiful. It’s a reminder of a time everyone has had where they were bright-eyed and bubbly. A time before the stresses of real life, like taxes and salaries, have completely set in. The joy of being a young person is something you only experience once, and Vampire Weekend understood how much of a tragedy that truly is.
Leave a Reply