Horscheisse
Right, I can hold it in no longer. I never posted it when it came out, and I have tried most studiously to ignore it ever since, but it seems I am failing, so it has to be said:
That fucking Horchata song by Vampire Weekend is absolutely fucking dreadful.
Is that xylophone I hear? Yes, I think it might be. And those fucking drums during the chorus – it’s so cod-ethnic it’s borderline fucking racist. It sounds like the fucking soundtrack to some sort of soul-crushing Lion King sequel for fuck’s sake.
I mean, we all know they’re fucking posh, but could the subject matter of a song possibly be any more banal and tediously middle class. And as for rhyming horchata with balaclava, I want to shove that bloody balaclava so far up his fucking arse that it pokes out his fucking mouth and actually makes it impossible to drink any fucking horchata at all.
It is one of the most hatefully squishy, insubstantial, irritating and just downright punchable songs I have ever heard. Yes, punchable. If I discovered a manner in which songs could be punched, then Hor-fucking-chata is the very first one upon which I would practise my newfound talent. I would, to rob a phrase from a friend, punch it until it stopped being fun, which would be never. Even with bits of brain and teeth starting to splatter about the place, the sheer fun of giving that song an unbelievably good punching just doesn’t seem like a pleasure which would ever grow old.
Mind you, if it ever did I could always skip forward two songs and start punching Holiday instead.
Vampire Weekend – Horchata
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i dunno if it’s racist, but it is bloody awful…..
…why do people love them so?
Ach I don’t think it’s actually racist, but it is such a lame charicature of Africanism that it does remind me a bit of the screamingly exaggerated queen character people were forever using to portray gay people before we realised that that was actually rather homophobic.
So intentionally racist, no I doubt it, but it really is quite uncomfortable.
But most importantly, as you say, it is genuinely fucking rotten.
I just went to find the track on YouTube because I’m on the bus home and the iPhone doesn’t load the Toadplayer.
It’s astonishing. I’ve never listened to Vampire Weekend before; somehow they’ve managed to combine Agadoo by Black Lace and Tarzan Boy by Baltmora without the charm of either.
What a bunch of unbelievable cunts!
A whole post dedicated to the hate of one song. I like.
That song is fucking awful. I actually do quite enjoy Vampire Weekend, but that song is way too far. The drums are hilarious.
M79 and Mansard Roof are still great songs though.
i’m not one to believe in overhyped music. most of the time people just say ‘overhyped’ when something is legitimately good, without giving it a fair chance.
This however, is not the case. I hear purposely innocent and ignorant sorority girls chanting their lyrics and obnoxious 14 yr old indie brats. It’s just too mindnumbingly and baby-punchingly cute.
/rant
Like the new album and have reviewed it at 17 Seconds. But – That is the worst song on it by a fucking country mile!
Well I liked the first record a lot and there are definitely good songs on this one too, but this song pains me like a cheese grater to the foreskin.
Well.
I had never heard a Vampire Weekend song until five minutes ago. So thanks for that. I am never reading another music blog again. it doesn’t seem worth the risk.
That’s it. I officially proclaim I don’t like Vampire Weekend.
On the basis of listening to half this track and considering their shitey, derivative, unimaginative tuppence-a-dozen band name.
There’s far too much good music out there to waste any time whatsoever on this abominable pish.
Welcome back from your Christmas break Matthew, good to see you’ve made a full recovery. excellent rant
Oh, c’mon, Dylan. Don’t let this shit song spoil what you certainly would enjoy…
The first album is definitely worthwhile. It’s pop music, and not all that deep or angsty, but very enjoyable. The sound is a lot more interesting than this song suggests.
Cough, Vampire Weekend are not worth a listen, and whatever you do, don’t go and see the shites live, omg it was the worst 45 mins of my life!
I liked the first album. The problem is that their sound is very, very distinctive and they blew up very big very fast, so could easily end up being one of those signature ‘sounds of 2008′ things which age very badly indeed.
I still enjoy the first album, but I’ll confess to not listening to it much anymore. The new one sounds pretty crap from the first few listens, but I may just be getting impatient with their sound by now, especially having heard it every-fucking-where for the last two or three years.
Regarding the xylophone, I think when it’s used in a cod-ethnic manner such as this, one refers to it as the marimba.
Similarly, on occasions such as this, one refers to the marimba player as the malodorous secretions of Satan’s mother’s foetid bowels, the cunt.
Toad is back!!!!
Wonderful analysis.
Sadly, the video is never of NME TV or MTV 2 which is asign that ‘the kids’ are loving it.
Any kids who love this are fucking idiots and are wrong. Being young doesn’t automatically make you right about this kind of shit.
Hmmm. “The kids” make my arse twitch.
You are ‘the kids’, Matthew.
Yeah young one, it’s your fault
Hmmm.. Much you have to learn, young padawan.
When did I become plural?
Honey, I’m Not One of the Kids…
coming to a theater near you, collared shirts required
VAMPIRE WEEKEND
Feb 14 2010
Edinburgh Picture House
Edinburgh, Scotland
Valentine’s day.
You won’t be able to move in the Picture House for 18-year-olds vomiting Jager-bombs and Pizza Express dinners down the dresses of their first dates.
Nice.
I doubt there will be many of that sort of eighteen-year-old at a Vampire Weekend gig, Dylan.
Personally, I am unlikely to be attending.
I might go just to polo shirt spotting. Makes a change from beard spotting.
I might go just for polo shirt spotting. Makes a change from beard spotting.
Urgh. Tired.
Lamest. TPM. Ever.
(insert winky smiley)
That really is a shit bit of Three-Post Mentalism, Matthew. Standards, boy, standards.
Nothing wrong with horchata. My local taco place makes a good one, lots of ice and covered with powdered cinnamon.
Well played.
Liked ‘Oxford Comma’ and ‘A-Punk’ but that’s it. Heard ‘Horchata’ once and that was enough. Won’t be bothering with the album either.
Eurgh. I never got them really. Glad I didn’t invest the effort.
aye its shite, channel 4 will probably use it as a back drop to that program when they put a bunch of teenage cunts on a desert island, and encourage them to act like cunts
‘that program when they put a bunch of teenage cunts on a desert island, and encourage them to act like cunts’ – I’m afraid it’s probably the case that they don’t need any outside encouragement….
Marimba is an instrument that reminds me of secondary school music lessons. And that is where it should remain.
I hate Oxford Comma, not because I particularly object to the tune, but I because I actually pay a fair bit of attention as to whether or not I choose to use an Oxford Comma in particular circumstances. Depending on the nature of the list in question it makes quite a difference to the rhythm of the reading, so it can be quite important. It’s called literacy, you fucks, and taking a little care about how you use the language is no bad thing.
Maybe you should apply the same care and attention to your music.
Quita apart from the obvious idiocy of the sentiment in that song, have you noticed how totally and utterly nonsensical the rest of the lyrics are?
“Check your passport
It’s no trick
Take the chapstick
Put it on your lips
Crack your smile
Adjust my tie
Know your butler, unlike other guys”
I’m glad someone else hates this. It was on pretty heavy rotation on Radio 6 a while back, along with that awful love of an orchestra song, can’t remember who that’s by. Sometimes they’d even play them back-to-back, just to annoy me, I swear..
The more people post about them on here, the they appear as no more than a novelty comedy band.
Which, if history serves, will mean they have a mercifully short moment of prominence, before vanishing back into obscurity alongside Right Said Fred and The Mike Flowers Pops within weeks.
Fingers crossed.
I Are – Love of an Orchestra is Noah and the Whale I believe.
I like Vampire Weekend a lot, although I haven’t heard the new album yet.
I almost always wear collared shirts (‘shirts’ I call them).
And tank tops.
Who wants a square go?
first vampire weekend song i’ve listened to – couldn’t agree more – just horribly simplistic stuff – but on the positive side, it sent me back to check out death vessel’s ‘deep in the horchata’ which is a wonderful song from a very interesting artist – i think the ‘hate’ for them is really just a contempt for the way they are lauded by corporate media as ‘indie’, and the way this is uncritically lapped up by some listeners, when they are of course as middle of the middle of the mid-road faux indie as many other such bands (and may be good, bad or indifferent judged on that scale) – i agree with whoever it was that said that there is so much great music out there, that one never gets around to listening to, so why waste time on anything that doesn’t grab you hard, or even which you think is only so-so – go find something amazing, there’s plenty out there!
I daresay, Matthew, that they were probably taking the proverbial mickey with that song and you took the proverbial bait. Do you really think they wrote that horchata/balaclava couplet with a straight face? I think they dangled this one out there like a chunk of red meat, with smirk in place and tongue in cheek. For the record, I’m utterly (frustratingly) indifferent on this band, but that’s my hunch — just thought I’d posit it.
Well the whole record is full of this stuff, unfortunately. So while you probably don’t write balaclava/horchata entirely seriously, you presumably don’t make the entire instrumentation of a whole album a pastiche just to make a great big joke, do you?
I’ll have to grant you that…
I quite like it. Oops.
Goddamnitjoehowcouldyou!
I don’t know, I can hear all those things that you talk about, and I can see it’s a ridiculous white boy pastiche but there’s just something about it that makes me a little bit happy inside.
Someone has to fund their polo shirt and deck shoe habit though, eh?
I felt that way about the first one, so maybe the joke’s just worn a little thin by now, that’s all. I just don’t find the tunes anything like as strong.