by Vadim Rizov

Vampire Weekend were anachronistic from the moment they formed: clean-cut Ivy League youths writing exceptionally clear songs, both in terms of structure and recording clarity. Their first self-titled album officially dropped January of 2008, almost exactly one year before Animal Collective’s Merriwether Post Pavilion,…

Pretty much all songs on all of Elliott Smith’s released recordings are immaculate on both the structural and engineering fronts, which doesn’t make them any less occasionally uncomfortable to listen to. At the moment of its release and after, XO was presumably forcing fans to choose an…