Feels So Natural

So I’m digging this NYC band Vampire Weekend, who I gather have an EP to their credit (details on their website), plus there are some demos floating around in the Interair. Apparently they’re coming up Toronto way on August 25.

I guess they’re best described as low-key but tuneful indie pop distinguished by Afrobeat-style guitar work – which is pretty much made to order for the me-liking-it category. The highlife sounds add some swing & energy & personality to their stuff, but they don’t overplay it or come off like they’re playacting. And it comes together to sound like, well, one sound, not a blend of different sounds. Here’s a particularly exhilarating example.

• Vampire Weekend, “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” (buy here)

And speaking of Afrobeat meets indie, I also recently came across (via a publicity e-mail, to give credit where it’s due) this Extra Golden project, which is a couple people from the D.C. band Golden paired up with a couple Kenyan musicians. They have one album out and apparently another coming out in the fall. I muchly prefer their stuff to the Golden songs I’ve heard. They can do sprightly highlife all right, but they can also do sad & languid & comtemplative, like this.

• Extra Golden, “It’s Not Easy” (buy here)

The way the gentle thump of the rhythm section and the meandering guitar lines tug and hold each other is what does it for me, and I like the falsetto, too. This one may flirt too closely with Dave Matthews Band mellow-stonerisms for some, but for me it pulls up short of that particular cliff.

For some reason the song makes me think of two good friends sitting around doing nothing – not reading, not talking, just sitting together listening to the music, once in a while their eyes flickering over each other accidentally, some unacknowleged melancholy in the air between them. (For what it’s worth, I don’t usually turn music I like into soundtracks by concocting little scenarios like that one.)