Review: Vampire Weekend

Pop isn't poetry - but sometimes it is almost better. Music composed and performed by (usually) young people in their teens and 20s, exuberantly dedicated to the zest of the moment, expressed in contemporary style and diction - well, that can be great fun, can lift the spirits, like a spring day that's actually hot. Sure, it melts on its own ephemeral going, to be Frostian; its slim grasp of tradition can make its magpie veerings as infuriating as thrilling. But when a band gets it right, well, it feels blissful, it feels sweet to be alive. It feels "like young". Vampire Weekend, measured in such terms (and why shouldn't criticism also be about joyful reception?) is one of the greatest first records of all time. Okay, until next week. But this week, in London, listening to these 11 songs of pure pop perfection, I feel like Larkin Hearing The Beatles in '63 - this sounds fresh, smart, and totally alive to its own wonky intentions.

First, let's admit that Vampire Weekend, the band, draw on any number of inspirations here - namely, Graceland (and the African sounds that was based on), The Strokes, The Killers, Ska, and, of course, Herman's Hermits - as well as a clutch of other smart, sassy campus-based groups of yore. But whereas snot-nosed youth usually aims to be smart and often is smart-assed, Vampire Weekend has caught the Simon and Garfunkel vibe truly - these songs are as genuinely touching as they are clever. But not just clever - wittily constrained in intriguing verbal ways that should appeal to poets - and everyone else. Infamously, most of the songs refer to military battles, or history, obliquely.

The cryptic lyrics (making The Shins seem transparent) coin phrase after phrase that delights and lodges in the brain, as in "the pin-striped men of morning". The great "M79" already has bloggers asking what "sing in praise of Jackson Crowter" means. Who Is John Galt? indeed. Other songs express suspicion of the "Oxford comma"; and the opening track opens with a "Mansard Roof". Infectious pop has rarely been so effortlessly erudite - it's like sipping lemonade with Buckminster Fuller on a blue July day. For now, I love this East Coast band. It'll be hard to find a better CD in 2008. Poetry should seek, more often, to play such sweet, fun, smart, upbeat notes.

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise...

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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