I CALLED IT (mgmt hopping on the wave)

Above is a screen-grab from MGMT's website. If this is not proof of the complete permeation of modern music with beach and aquatic aesthetics, I don't know what is. In starting my now defunct show Thalassique I swore to everyone that I was on to something that music journalists would refer to in retrospect as an aquatic, or if I may leave my mark in any way, a thalassic sonic movement.

According to a recent interview with SPIN.com, a lot of MGMT's forthcoming album was inspired by Andrew Vanwyngarden recently learning how to surf, and that the activity is a resounding "thread throughout the record." These 2 psychedelic, art-spective kids could have lain their sights on anything for their latest compositions' thematic direction. But they chose this one. It's really general, I know, (water, the sun, the sand) and so it's easy to try to pigeonhole people into relying on it aesthetically or having something in common with other musicians who do, but the fact is that this aesthetic is something that exists independently in the world and is not born in anyone's mind. It is something that brushes people by and infects them, or leaves them a little damp, salty, tanned. Curiouser and curiouser people start to come together and make the same kinds of things.

That Vampire Weekend album? Everyone was saying they'd gone from Ivy-League Africa to California, but the addition of bells etc and cooler melodies definitely didn't produce a uniquely California sound--it was more tropical than dry and easy-going. But everyone jumped to call it California because 1) there is a song with the state in the title and 2) that's just what you think of when you hear something that sounds like a warm-climate vacation and you're stuck in a Northern Hemisphere winter. Though 'beach' is synonymous with California for many, whether you want to call Contra 'Californian' or 'tropical' still proves it is riding on this same wave, and like everything 'aquatic' out there, is a product of [the influence of] the independently existing aesthetic that paradoxically is a product of the collective efforts of many, who autonomously dreamed up its features.

I'm just pointing this out because it is something that first rolled in on tape decks and tiny shows on coastal capitals in this country and now it's coloring the work of the most propitious indie rock heavy-weights that have already got their breaks in national music publications.

So it's probably a good idea that I don't do this show anymore, because wnyu is no place for mgmt or vampire weekend.