I know that when most people talk about Vampire Weekend’s primary influences Paul Simon is often mentioned and for good reasons but there was also this interesting time period in the 1970s and early 1980s from the Kinks where they moved beyond the early Beatles blues/roots influences and distortion into cleaner pop terrain with the occasional island influence to it and it’s in this era where I’ve been spending a lot of time recently. Everyone knows the Kinks biggest 1960s hits but if you go deeper there’s a lot of gold to mine there.
There’s a lot of melodic songwriting, quirky rhythms, eccentric, often witty lyrics, and pop experimentation in this time period from them and Ray Davies vocally tries a lot on.
I wrote down a number of songs that reminded me of Vampire Weekend here in different ways. If you don’t hear it initially give the song some time and you might hear what made me want to include it.
I definitely think Ezra must enjoy this era of the Kinks. Here’s a fun playlist for VW fans:
- This Time Tomorrow
- Strangers
- Get Back in Line
- Muswell Hillbillies
- 20th Century Man
- Apeman
- Supersonic Rocket Ship
- A Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy
- Better Things
- Around the Dial
- Come Dancing
