Tag Archives: Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Things I Learned this Week

Among the things I learned this week:
* Spotify audio quality isn’t as good as I expected, despite knowing the format. I suspect it is a non-issue for most people. (Courtesy: Spotify)

* Weddings benefit from having Baltimore-based attendees: They know how to dance and they play good music. (Courtesy: MLs)

* According to excellent, interesting, insightful, and important research by Byers, Mitzenmacher, and Zervas, daily deals carry a reputational cost to the sponsoring establishment. Specifically, Yelp reviewers who went to an establishment due to a Groupon or LivingSocial coupon, reviewed the establishment 10 percent lower than non-daily deals reviewers. The paper also sheds light and raises questions about the sales dynamics of daily deals and social network effects on these types of sales. I only wish they had better controlled for the Yelp reviews by comparing daily deal establishments with non-daily deal establishments across the same time; not only is this relevant methodologically, but it is also something of interest to me. (Courtesy: Business Insider)

* Reading Rainbow returns as an iOS app! (Courtesy: TUAW)

* Chinese shadow play is cool, but lacks the unmatchable brilliance of gamelan, the music that accompanies Indonesia’s shadow play–wayang kulit. (Courtesy: Tangshan Shadow Puppet Theatre)

* Karen O, like me, is getting into opera. (Courtesy: Yeah Yeah Yeahs)

Rock Has No Soul, But Does It Have Flow?

Thanks to an incredibly generous HD, I was able to see Vampire Weekend when they played Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel in early February. Given all the hype, I expected them to both bore and hurt, but I was surprised (yeah, yeah, the album is on my To Listen list).

I thoroughly enjoyed the show, but quickly noticed two aspects of the band. First, they are clearly young. Their sound is bare and minimalist (but not in the good German way), needing to expand, be filled in, and evolve past the rather simple structure of each of their songs. That part’s doable and standard.

The other issue, though, is that the lead singer (Ezra Koenig) has no flow. All of their songs are delivered in the same monotone post-Brit pop way. While the nasality of it all is loved by the birds and very trendy, the lack of tempo, note, and style changes–in other words, flow–is not. Even in the whitest of white genres, indie rock, (good) bands usually have lead singers with a bit of flow. And those outstanding bands have lead singers with amazing flow. In this latter case, the best example I can think of is Karen O, who uses incredible significant and nuanced vocal/flow changes within a song, between songs, and across albums (Admission: I listen to the entire YYYs discography once every 36 hours, on average).

It would be difficult to argue that flow does not matter to all music with vocals, but we rarely think, hear, read, or write about its importance outside of hip hop. At best, there is mention of the singer’s voice, but that usually has to do with energy, clarity, and pitch, not the more general but also more specific notion of flow. So here’s my purely rhetorical question: Why?