The Last Word from Your Editor, Sam C. Mac: With the 2010s officially over, the time seems right for another departure: after 12 years (with a small break in the middle), I’m stepping down as this site’s Editor-in-Chief, to be succeeded by co-founder (and unapologetic…
2019 was another faithful year that reminded us that there’s no hope whatsoever for anything: Our political system continues to fail us in a remarkable number of ways, cultural institutions continue to decay from lack of funding and relevancy, and the nearly-decade long rise…
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,…
From the moment Vampire Weekend stepped off the Columbia University campus and quite literally into Rostam Batmanglij’s “studio” apartment to record songs about Lil Jon, the United Nations, and their own grammatical inclinations, they have been nothing if not indie-pop royalty. The band’s self-titled…