Walcott

Walcott by Vampire Weekend

I haven't been blown over by an album in a good five years... probably longer. I think the last album that I bought and just blew my socks off like Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut was the Stroke's "Is This It" (I should note, I loved "Bows + Arrowss" by the Walkmen and listed to that album about 100 times over the summer of 2004).

What I'm getting at here is that albums that blow your socks off just don't come around very often. And when such an album does hit you, you listen to that album all the time. It becomes a time and place, more so than the actual geographical location itself. The album can take you back to where you were and who you were, what you were doing and what you were feeling. For example:

- "Phantom Power" by the Tragically Hip -- this album was my senior year of high school and it takes me back to my room in the 'Dale. I like my life. I had a good collection of friends and was at peace with pretty much everything. To this day, "Fireworks" is one of my favorite songs because it became apart of who I was at that point in my life. Bobby Orr and 1972 and Carlton Fisk are all some how connected because of this song and album.

- "Is This It" by the Strokes - I am taken to my sophomore year dorm and Centennial Village. If I am in my dorm I am probably playing Civilization II or III if it was out by then. If not, I'm walking around campus at night thinking and figuring out life.

- "Vampire Weekend" by Vampire Weekend - I don't know what the memory will end up being. Maybe I'll look back and realize how busy I was running around the city of Chicago and trying to find a job while trying to catch my first break and making my own luck.

This doesn't always happen, where a song an album becomes so ingrained in one's life, time, and place that it becomes apart of that person. But when it does, you wish there were more albums like this... these are the albums that give us hope in music.

As far as this song, two things... the lyrics are brilliant. I mean if the Strokes nailed the anxiety of the post 9/11 world I've grown up in, Vampire Weekend encompasses the boredom that Generation Y has been living in. We're been given too much. We know this. And we are bored by everything because of it. This is why we want to leave Cape Cod and why Hyannisport is a ghetto.

Secondly, any song that has THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE in it gets a word up and get ya.

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