The Descendants #1: “A-Punk”

Tay started a column. I thought I might too. Mine will strive to be the sillier one.

The Premise: The first independent record labels were founded by and for first-wave punk bands and really took off when hardcore and post-punk came around in the following years. The 80′s were moving along nicely, and those maturing punk bands were soon identified as “college rock.” By the time the now-divisive abbreviation “indie” crept up in the early 90′s, the bands wearing the label were still plenty punk. As much as folks love to hate the term, “indie” just won’t seem to leave the discussion and is just as present today as it ever was. But does it still have anything to do with its punk roots?

Course not! But as a fun little exercise, I’ll be examining some of the latest, hottest “indie” jams to see if I can’t pick out which bits they might have inherited from their punk ancestors. In this first edition, I’ll pick apart Vampire Weekend’s hugely popular breakout tune “A-Punk” from their 2008 self-titled debut.

So, the production on this song is just about as squeaky clean as you can get. Sterile even! Their guitarist has the “un-distortion” knob cranked to ten. Nothing is out of place or sloppy and everything is played with utmost precision. The chorus is layered with some synthetic woodwind keyboard patch. SO not punk, guys!

Let’s look a little closer. The way the drums come in is such a total bonehead Ramones move. No flash, just great dumb thudding. “Thud. Thud. Thud-Thud-Thud-Thud.” The “fill” happens at the end of every chorus as well. Aside from the rote disco-hats before the verse and the afro-pop (vom!) tom work in the chorus, the terseness of the eighth note hi-hat beat in the rest of the song is damn near Wire-esque.

Vocally, that Ezra dude’s got things pretty steady and under control even though it sounds like he might be straining himself a tad to get up to that bright, squawky register. And yet, there’s this moment in in the first verse when his delivery borders on urgent. While singing the lines, “She took it from his lily white hand/ Showed no fear she’d seen the thing,” his voice starts to waver and veer of course ever so slightly, sacrificing accuracy and temperateness in favor of a more recklessly emotive delivery. The notes crack as he sings “lily white hand,” and he spits out “seen the thing” in an exasperated deadpan not unlike that monotone stutter-chopped voice adopted by so many early hardcore vocalists. And of course, the low-hanging fruit here is that shout-along “Ay! Ay! Ay!” Not only does Ezra shout it exactly like one would shout “Oi! Oi! Oi!” but it also elicits the same response from crowds, who are apt to pump a very punk rock raised fist with each shout. The primary difference is that Vampweek’s Ay!’s fall on the off-beats while Oi!’s are always on down beats. Seriously, it’s the law. The working man can’t syncopate for shit.

Now let’s move to a more global perspective. In addition to the production being scrubbed clean of any and all impurities, it’s also incredibly sparse and utilitarian, a pretty foundational trademark of punk recordings. This song’s got one guitar track, one bass track, a drum kit, some pretty unfussy keyboard bits in the choruses, and little else to speak of. Simple! Also, the thing barely breaks the two-minute mark and displays the kind of songwriting efficiency that is rarely seen outside the punk genre. Verse, chorus, shouts, verse, chorus, shouts, done. It does what it needs to do and gets the hell out. Nice.

Stay tuned for The Descendants #2, in which I foolishly dig for punk gold in Animal Collective’s “My Girls”.

-m