Guide to Confusing Musical Developments.

So I read today in pitchfork that the "Contra" album by Vampire Weekend is now the number one selling album in the country.

I'm not sure how I feel about this, other than nonplussed and strangely vindicated.

Not "vindicated" because I actually like the album. I have heard maybe two tracks off of it, and as far as I can tell it falls into the recent "involuntary music" trend, where I'll be walking around and living my life and then a song will come on the radio when I'm in the car with my girlfriend and I will ask "what is this?" and she will tell me that it's Vampire Weekend or Grizzly Bear or Phoenix or Peter, Bjorn, and John, and I will react by excreting some kind of nondescript "harumph" sound, and go back to living my life with as much direct impact from the information as I would experience from having just been told "here you go" by a coat room attendant or "have a good one" by the UPS guy. It's the kind of music for which a free download is not even particularly exciting because you never need to listen to it. It's in that rarefied musical quantum state where something is so mediocre it actually ceases to exist while it happens. But that's just my opinion. According to Billboard, I guess I don't have the same tastes as everybody else (unless I actually do, and I'm just thinking about it more than I need to). In fact, I'd say I feel vindicated by the popular dollar vote that this is in fact an aggressively mediocre album, so much so that it's inherently unnecessary. Usually when a bunch of people buy something, it's unnecessary. And when I'm not one of the buyers, I like it when that happens. Because I feel like I didn't need it and then have that decision confirmed through contrary popular opinion, I take it as one in a diminishing series of signs that I'm not crazy.

But that's not what's troubling me. What's troubling me is how little I feel at this moment. I used to care about "independent" music. The report from Billboard mentions that this is the first "independent" number one album since the last Pearl Jam album (that they distributed independently). How's that for splitting hairs? Pearl Jam is an "indie" band like I'm an athlete. It works. I've played basketball before. I can remember a time when independently-minded people rooted for other independently-minded people to succeed while doing independently-minded things, and we all got together and wore thrift store clothes and called ourselves "indie rockers" and bitched and moaned about gentrification like it wasn't us. Now everything is different except for the "call ourselves indie rockers" part.

In a way that's good, because the smugness was unbearable. That doesn't mean I've let go of my own smugness. I'm being pretty emeffing smug right now, in case you noticed, but I also don't leave the house very much these days, and if I do, it's not to go hang out for hours standing up in some crowded shithole full of other "indie rockers." It makes my back sore and it's boring. Not worth it. And when I do inhabit the same space as an "indie rocker," like in a record store or a clothing store or a book store or a food store or something (we only spend money these days), I usually just try to crack jokes until I feel like I've gotten enough of a laugh to be able to leave without feeling humiliated for having wasted my own precious doing-nothing-around-the-house time. I'm insecure that way. And also: I have a girlfriend who does a pretty good job of telling me what to do with my non-doing-nothing-around-the-house time, usually some family thing I'm supposed to enjoy that we have to drive to while I decide whether I'd rather listen to complaints about family stuff or Vampire Weekend on the radio. It's 50-50, but luckily the decision usually gets made for me. Anyhow, nowadays I can have a pretty decent conversation about music with just about anyone, and it's either a sign of maturity or the coming apocalypse that I can get just as much out of it if we're talking about The Dave Matthews Band instead of Xerobot.

There's not really much to say on the subject of Xerobot. Weird obscure synthpunk shitwave band from mid-90's Wisconsin, Devo meets Mars. I neither love them nor don't. The end. Dave Matthews Band: intolerable to listen to, but at least they dumped their own feces down the collars of two thirds of an open-deck architectural boat tour, the combination of which is accidentally more punk rock than 97% of actual punk rock bands. Which would you rather talk about?

But another thing is weird to me about Vampire Weekend taking the top spot in album sales. The figure 124,000 seemed weird to me, so I looked up the sales figures on Billboard for other releases. I guess it's pretty low. Then I looked at the weekend box office for "Avatar," did some quick calculations and figured that about 40 times as many people watched "Avatar" as bought "Contra" this week. No surprise there. Then I looked up the sales figures for digitally downloaded albums, and saw that Ke$ha has the current top spot on the strength of her discounted $6.99 a-download album "Animal." Then I briefly considered listening to some Ke$ha, got a headache, and closed all of the tabs in my browser that had anything related to music in them. Not worth it.

I'd like to make some kind of a point here about the waning cultural importance of music and how the assholes-that-be who would seek to ruin everything for the sake of the buck have finally succeeded to the point where nobody even cares or listens anymore, or about how bands that I actually like are probably going to be more culturally significant among the "indie" scene in the coming decade because we're out of other choices, or about how Pitchfork "no longer speaks for or to anybody I respect" (still--I know, what a total non-story) or something dramatic like that because I "can't believe" they gave "Contra" an 8.6, or about how maybe the only people who are still big enough suckers to pay for an actual physical artifact with music in it are a bunch of late-to-the party pseudo-hipster bearded North Face babyman wine/liquor sales reps with Volkswagens and those three-wheeled strollers you're supposed to use to go running with your fashionbaby (don't judge, they got a good deal on it from Overstock.com).

Oh, and also I'd say something about vinyl and how much I love it even though it's a pain in the ass (and I love it because I'm also a pain in the ass, so I can relate to it, except I also think it's a total pain in the ass and I have no idea in the world why I recently thought it'd be a good idea to get a used copy of that Stephen Prina album except because I'm a sucker and a babyman in my own contrarian "isn't it cool that I have things on vinyl, even if I don't really like them myself" way--oh well, maybe I'll learn from it).

But... I don't want to make a point anymore. I'm too tired, and I feel nothing. We live in strange times. The end.