Editorial: Say It Ain’t So, Carrie

One of the bright spots of 2007 in the blog world was when Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein started Monitor Mix for NPR. Brownstein offers insightful looks at the music world on both a micro and macro level. I’m usually a big fan of her writing, but her latest entry is disappointing as fuck.

Brownstein offered a rehashing of the same arguments against Vampire Weekend’s quick rise to fame that we’ve already read from Spin, the Village Voice and a buncha shitty blogs. And just like everyone else Brownstein admits she likes the album. Yes, we all know they’ve only released one album, and we don’t know if the next one will continue the trend.

But why do all of these journalist spend one line saying they like the album, and then three paragraphs trying to knock VW down? I’d usually ignore Brownstein’s ramblings and move on, but what she did next was particularly uncouth. She drops a photo of a Sperry Top-Sider, and admits her hesitation to fully embrace Vampire Weekend might stem from “the fact that if you take preppy yacht rock too far, you end up back at Jimmy Buffet.”

Why are so many people that are supposedly about “the music” spending so much time talking about Vampire Weekend’s fashion sense and Ivy League educations? I’m sensing some major jealousy. I guess if critics fawned over every note I made, yet I couldn’t sell records to save my life I’d be jealous too. Meanwhile, I still find new parts of Vampire Weekend’s album that catch my ear. But why discuss the actual music when we can just guffaw at preppy and yacht?