The next "....." pt.3

On most people's musical journeys of discovery, or mine at least, it comes to a point where you get bored of whats being thrown out into the British Indie scene, naked under their Libertines T-Shirts, with perhaps only a vague nod towards anything before Up The Bracket.

So then you look further afield than dear old blighty and have a little glimpse at the much less derivative and generally healthier US Indie scene. Usually discovering Modest Mouse somewhere along the way. But on the whole, worshipping whichever is the "next big thing from America". Remember The Spinto Band? Clap Your Hands Say Yeah? Cold War Kids?

Of course you do. And the next band to fall firmly into that category are Vampire Weekend.

Mixing the chilled out genius of The Shins (who they supported) with a traditional Afrobeat percussion, its easy to see why a band like Vampire Weekend wouldn't survive on a UK diet alone. They are one of those bands that, if they existed in just the suffocating London or Manchester scenes, would still, unfortunately, be doing their day jobs. But thanks to the massive appetite of your average American music fan, the sheer size of the place, and the US's uncanny ability to have bands sell a million albums and still be unknown, these have manged to scrape enough of a living in America to take on the world. They are not the first band to do so, and will not be the last, and it seems a shame that British msuic can't be the same. It seems as if there are proportionally fewer small bands who stick with independent labels and actually have enough fledgling success to tour Europe or the World.

The best example of their strange juxtaposition of styles is on "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa", where the traditional African beat is behind lyrics about Peter Gabriel. Although the prospective album highlight will still be former single "Walcott", ironically their most American-sounding song, but the one I can't stop listening to.

Signed to XL, they release their debut album Vampire Weekend on January 29th, 2008.

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