College campus heroes Ra Ra Riot and Vampire Weekend have been buddies for years. Ra Ra spent ’06 and ’07 opening for Editors, Art Brut and Tokyo Police Club. The release of their debut LP got delayed after their drummer, JR Pike, died last year. His untimely death inspired the song “Dying is Fine,” which is probably the band’s most interesting song yet. Vampire Weekend on the other hand has been all over the place this year, including here. Both bands are typically categorized as “Indie Rock/Pop”, although I’m going to have to check with Sabrina to make sure they’re not Lo-Fi / Math Rock with a hint of Twee. Given this, it came as a surprise to me to hear the sound and style of the new project Discovery.
Rostam Batmanglij (the brains behind the VW sound) went to his buddy Wes Miles (lead singer of Ra Ra) and told him that he wanted to make an EP that sounded like a collaboration between The Album Leaf and T-Pain. The baby of this collabo is the “Discovery EP” which can be heard on the pair’s Myspace page. Rostam has Wes singing through an auto-toner on one song, uses fatter synths than DJ Toomp laid down on Kanye’s Flashing Lights on another track, while dropping poppy romantic lyrics like “Oh baby baby baby babe, how long am I supposed to wait, I think about you nightly, can you tell I’m nervous every time you speak?” over sweet sweet electro-pop beats.
The three track EP is sweeet and features three songs that I can’t download anywhere. So head over to the Discovery MySpace page and enjoy.
5 Comments
dying is fine was written before john died.. which makes it even more interesting.
— no, April 6, 2008should have checked my facts better. but you’re right, that does make it more interesting.
— Sal, April 6, 2008Can you epilepsy?
— will, April 6, 2008Si, se puede.
— Sal, April 7, 2008Now I feel compelled or whatever to weigh in since this “other” will left a comment again. Nothing against his comment… in fact he’s got a pretty good point… I think it’s a lingering turf issue from my gang days. I was in the Cruds, neither team liked us much.
Ummm so…. weigh in. I really hate Vampire Weekend. Nothing personal, their album was fine for a listen. It was more everything that hyped up around their blandly derivative little sound. But this music is nice and refreshing. It might be that I’m currently on 34 hours without having slept, but it feels pretty right.
I’ll try and make some sort of epic wildlife comeback this Wednesday, it’s been longer than pinocchio’s nose. Cheers.
— Will, April 7, 2008
