Vampire Weekend plus Ra Ra Riot equals Discovery

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I have three confessions: I love Vampire Weekend, and I love Ra Ra Riot, and I love Discovery.

What Discovery is, besides the spaceship and a TV channel, is Ra Ra Riot’s Wes Miles and Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij, and instead of churning out lovely orchestral pop as they do with their respective bands, they churn out… jams. Z100-style club-banger jams, with autotune and fuzzy synth and lyrics like “google yourself when you get home.” Jams I, a white girl, feel comfortable awkwardly gesticulating to whilst driving in my car or whilst alone in a room (sometimes, I must admit, in a room with other people). Jams of the caliber of “Single Ladies” or “Yeah!” era Usher.

Discovery have two songs as of now, so maybe I’m taking things a step too far when I laud them so passionately.

But listen to this: “Orange Shirt” is a bunch of clapping and fuzz and Wes singing “I promise to leave before your mother wakes up in the morning” and about “sleeping head to toe” and in the end confessing, over keyboard scales and artful computerized stuttering, “and me, I got a crush.”

[audio=http://pmatunes.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/discovery-orange-shirt-mastered.mp3,Discovery - Orange Shirt]
Download this track here

And listen to this: “Osaka Loop Line” is all dizzy, distraught (“I lost you there, and lost my mind”), and romantic (“and now I see that you fell asleep again…”), things break down and come together, synth swirls around like fog or clouds, and Rostam’s autotuned voice is a kind of message from another time: “the loop line takes you out of view.”

[audio=http://pmatunes.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/discovery-osaka-loop-line-mastered.mp3,Discovery - Osaka Loop Line]
Download this track here

Sometimes you need to get down, and there are some musicians who know how to facilitate that. I predict that Discovery will be blowing up the floor of your high school’s gymnasium someday, based on this power they so effortlessly wield – and the next morning, when your young sibling recounts his or her debaucherous experiences, all set to a song that began “I’m walking past your house… but I’m never gonna stop there,” you can smile and look back, and remember.

update: player now working

by Genevieve Oliver on April 30, 2009 ‡ 0 reactions