The New York Times Arts blog on CMJ 19 Oct 2007

We have a ton of bands playing at CMJ this week, and the New York Times has written kindly about a couple of them so far on their arts blog .

Nice things on VAMPIRE WEEKEND + CELEBRATION so far...

Neatness matters to Vampire Weekend, who played a concise afternoon
set of snappy little pop songs at the Cake Shop. Neatness always
matters or snappy little pop bands, but Vampire Weekend is the only
one with a chorus that goes “Is your bed made?” Of course, there’s
more to that question than housekeeping.

Vampire Weekend’s songs are terse clockwork constructions that equate
cooperation with mutual avoidance. If the guitar is playing chords,
the keyboard isn’t, or vice versa; if the rhythm section is playing
downbeats, the guitar is on off-beats, and if vocals or keyboards have
a sustained melody, everyone else is staccato. One band member
introduced various songs as “jams,” although they are emphatically
not jams, since every note is locked in its clever place. The lyrics
take up romance (on and off-campus), lies and, often, real estate,
from mansard roofs to brownstones in San Juan. It’s not just that the
band comes from real-estate-obsessed New York CIty; it’s that in
Vampire Weekend’s songs, every millimeter of space counts.

To speed his set up, David Bergander, the drummer for the Baltimore group Celebration, assembled his drum kit on the sidewalk outside Piano’s this afternoon; the Manhattan club was crowded for a free showcase organized by the blog BrooklynVegan. Celebration had performed with the Brooklyn act Dragons of Zynth at Union Pool in Williamsburg on Tuesday night. Then the two bands hung out together until 4:30 a.m. at the friend’s Williamsburg apartment where Celebration was staying, Mr. Bergander said. How did the members prepare for their Piano’s show, their last at this year’s Marathon? “We slept in,” Mr. Bergander said. “The last time we played CMJ, two years ago, we did a Fader showcase at like 2 p.m., completely hungover.” This time, after an afternoon breakfast of Korean food, they were ready to play.

Listen as Katrina Ford, the singer of the Baltimore band Celebration, talks about how she’ll prepare for their upcoming tour: here(by Melena Ryzik and Jeremy Beiler)

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