Vam­pire Week­end’s self-titled debut reeks of priv­i­lege, yet is so strange­ly self-assured, com­pelling and total­ly New York City that I need­ed to check my watch to remind myself how long ago Is This It? came out.

But will it make my 2008 top ten?

Added note: Lef­setz thinks that the role of the crit­ic is dimin­ish­ing. Who does he think sets these hype cycles in motion? These bands don’t just mate­ri­al­ize deus ex machi­na, or if they do, crit­ics keep the hype ham­ster wheel spin­ning. Maybe he does­n’t real­ize it, but from this crit­ic’s per­spec­tive, it’s pret­ty remark­able when any band sur­faces above the fray and can endure as a buzz for more than eight months! Think what you will of Vam­pire Week­end, but if their debut ends up on ’08 year-end lists after being released in Jan­u­ary, it’ll be quite an accomplishment.

Last­ly, so-called tastemak­ers aren’t as com­mit­ted to the suc­cess or fail­ure of a giv­en band as he might think. For an influ­en­tial, self-impor­tant guy, his faux pop­ulist act tends to wear a lit­tle thin.

Infor­ma­tion snack­ing: some­times it actu­al­ly helps peo­ple out, illu­mi­nates a point or some­thing. Regard­less of how much I agree with Ian’s thoughts on Juno and its sound­track, I’m prob­a­bly going to end up see­ing this movie before too long. I’m bummed in advance.

Matt Taib­bi at the Smirk­ing Chimp writes:

In Barack Oba­ma ver­sus Hillary Clin­ton, we’ve basi­cal­ly got Kennedy-Nixon redux, and I mean that in the most neg­a­tive pos­si­ble sense for both of them — a pair of super­fi­cial, pos­tur­ing con­ser­v­a­tives sell­ing high­ly sim­i­lar polit­i­cal pack­ages using dif­fer­ent emo­tion­al strate­gies. Oba­ma is sell­ing free trade and employ­er-based health care and an unclear Iraqi exit strat­e­gy using looks, charis­ma and opti­mism, while Hillary is sell­ing much the same using hard, cold real­i­ty, “prose not poet­ry,” man­age­r­i­al com­pe­tence over “vision.”

This sums up my sen­ti­ments on this elec­tion bet­ter than any­thing I’ve read since this far­ci­cal elec­tion sea­son began.

I’ve nev­er been a Moun­tain Goats fan, though I can sense that at one point in his­to­ry I might’ve been, were it not for the exis­tence of the Smiths, R.E.M., et. al. Or anoth­er time when lo-fi was all that mat­tered, but I felt some­how more con­nect­ed to Pave­ment, Son­ic Youth, et. al. So when The Sun­set Tree rolls around and every­one is excit­ed, I’m not, but I chalk that up to a theme with which I can’t real­ly relate. But here’s Heretic Pride and there’s not a blog on the inter­net not post­ing an mp3 and all I can think about is an earnest, lit­er­ate Tena­cious D (cough) being front­ed by David Sedaris.

Check “Sax Rohmer #1′ out for your­self at Paper Thin Walls.

This inter­view with Cul­ture Pulp is a new favorite. [HT: Book­slut]