LAFL : "HOW THE CRUEL WITH TIME BECOMES CLASSICAL" - Vampire Weekend Classical

I LOVE THIS SONG BIG TIME. I have listened to this at least 20x in the last two days. I never anticipated that a song that is literally about the history of cruelty normalized and codified into our societal structure like its own classical canon would fill me with such joy. Ezra really said "Untrue , unkind, unnatural" - is he describing the history of Western civilization, colonization, and white supremacy or one of my exes? What a poet! But everything for the cleverly crafted historical breakdown of class and warfare shaping the outcomes of our society to the bombastic and frenetic orchestration heralds this as one of Vampire Weekend's best songs.

These new singles are calling so heavily back to the 2010s Vampire Weekend with a hint of their self-titled and Contra albums (it reminds me a lot of Walcott). But Classical offers us this novel and triumphant piece that in a lot of ways feels like the most embodied version of their entire discography. Its bombastic jazz bassline that pushes us through as we alternate between these distorted guitar swells and this classically stepwise guitar melody on top, that's almost reminiscent of a flute part of a Mozart piece. Vampire Weekend's interesting instrumentation choices in this song offers us an almost deconstructed and reconstructed orchestra. As we weave through a history of western civilization, the song itself consistently builds and rebuilds itself exploding in this incredibly expressively and vivid musical bridge. Lyrically, the band explores the way that war and class conflict builds, destroys and rebuilds our sense of a society and sense of self. In times of war, the educated class knew what to do. In times of peace, their pupils couldn't meet your baby blues. Four hundred million animals competing for the zoo. It's such a bleak sunrise. Through the reshaping of our society, while we've largely away from religion "The temple's gone" but remaining within us is a will to change and a search for meaning but still a single column stands today. That sinking feeling fades, but never really goes away. A staircase up to nothingness inside your DNA. Well, that's a bleak sunrise. And here we are, still looking for a meaning, for fulfillment, trying to figure out a meaning of this life. I'm beyond excited for this album release.

Enjoy

Thanks for

Keeping Tabs