#less whinging than previous couple i guess

[mlobsters]

supernatural s13e04 the big empty (w. meredith glynn)

SAM Dean, that isn’t what this is about. Jack needs to get out. He needs to get some air. We all do. He’s a good kid. He is, just… give him a chance, please. For me.

dean surely can't resist that

JACK So I can be your “interdimensional can opener”? You’re using me. SAM Jack… when you were born, it ripped a hole in reality. Like a—like a door from this world to another, to a… a really bad, bad place. So—so Dean and Cas, and I, we—we closed that door. But… our Mom, Mary, she’s trapped on the other side. If we can get your powers back, maybe we can open that door up. Maybe…

hadn't really thought about but i wouldn't put it past sam of days gone by if he desperately needed something to only play nice to get what he wanted

SAM Yeah. Yeah, I do. But… if this doesn’t work, if that can’t happen, that’s okay, because I do care about you. But I should’ve told you. I’m sorry. It’s a lot and, uh… JACK Dean can’t even look at me. He wants to kill me. SAM I won’t let that happen. Listen, if there’s one thing that Dean respects, it’s effort. So come along. Help us out. Let’s go be the good guys.

i guess it speaks to my feelings about the show right now but i'm so sick of this thing over jack between sam and dean. the only sliver of an upside is hearing sam talk about dean a lot

DEAN All right, well, you said you wanted to help, so, uh… dig. SAM Dean, what’s up with all the orders? You’re starting to sound like Dad.

ooh, burn. i laughed

DEAN That a bad thing? SAM I’m just saying his—his drill sergeant act worked with you… but it didn’t work with me. And that’s not the way we’re gonna get through to Jack.

tell him, sam. but also, samuel. you essentially invited a large toddler to come, it's gonna be a lot of legit babysitting the way they're making this character behave. it's like vacation with kids. it's less work to stay at home 🤪

DEAN That’s right, and what gets burned… stays dead

or not 🤪🤪🤪 so did people know cas was coming back when this season started?

ah we've seen this lady before, she was in 7x07 and i hiky'd her because she's in yellowjackets (rukiya bernard as simone abara)

rolling my eyes at the family therapy with jack along cover. dean continues to be an asshole about jack and he's fucking up their cover by being an ass and i kind of want to punch him

DEAN Because if he admits it, then it’s real. If it’s real, then he has to deal with it, and he can’t handle that. SAM Right, because this is so easy for you, uh? DEAN No, it’s not easy. SAM Yeah, but at least you had a relationship with Mom. I mean, who would she always call? Who did she look to for everything? DEAN Okay. SAM You had something with her I never had! And now I’m just supposed to accept that I never will have it?

oh, sammy. dean only had a few scraps too, fighting over crumbs

MIA You just upset your brother so much, he had to leave the room. And Jack? Look at him. He’s terrified of you. DEAN Nah. No, we’re simpatico. Right, kid? JACK We’re simpatico. MIA Convincing. You’re angry, Dean. DEAN And? MIA And if you don’t want to do anything about it, that’s your business. But you’re aiming it at everyone in your life.

the way they're learning into him being an asshole, hope it means it'll taper off soon.

good god what is this voice/accent big empty entity fake cas

COSMIC ENTITY That’s not part of the deal. No, no. Besides, you don’t want to go back. CASTIEL Yes, I do. Sam and Dean need me. COSMIC ENTITY Oh, save it. I have tiptoed through all your little tulips. Your memories, your little feelings, yes. I know what you hate. (Whispers) I know who you love… what you fear. There is nothing for you back there. No. Here. Let me show you. [We see some FLASHBACKS: METATRON stealing CASTIEL’s grace; LUCIFER killing CASTIEL; CASTIEL walking into the lake after the LEVIATHANS took over; CASTIEL returning the souls he stole from Purgatory; CASTIEL lying on the floor, seemingly dead, after returning the souls.]

thanks for the details, transcriber, i wasn't sure what those all were. i thought it was cas stealing whoever else's. not sure i understand where they're going with the "i know who you love and what you fear there's nothing for you on earth" business. feeling guilty for his fuckups? being resurrected so many times? i don't get it

we get the reassurance from a good monster lady and certified freak sam for jack now :p i did like the "even monsters can do good in the world" line though

well i'm glad the shifter didn't stay as dean very long because we went down that road in s1, no need to revisit :p

COSMIC ENTITY Come on, Castiel! Wouldn’t you rather be a fond memory than a constant, festering disappointment?

okay, fuckups it is. (how about shoutout to breaking sam's wall lalala)

DEAN (to Jack) You gotta snap these cuffs. JACK I can’t. DEAN Yes, you can. DEAN Sammy believes in you, and when he believes, he’ll go Hell for leather…

well, saving sammy's life is a surefire way to earn some points with dean

DEAN Hey. You did good today, Jack.

all right, next let's keep up the better-than-john parenting going

DEAN Listen, man, back at, uh, Mia’s, I was out of line. I’m sorry for being a… a dick lately. SAM Thanks. DEAN And maybe you’re right, about the kid. I mean, he tries. I’ll give him that. And he tapped his powers, saved our ass, so that’s a win. SAM Yeah. I guess. DEAN What’s up? SAM What if you’re right? About Mom. What if she is dead, and I’m just in denial? DEAN Don’t say that. SAM What? You’ve been wanting me to admit that since it happened. DEAN I know I have, but don’t say that. I need you to keep the faith, for both of us. ‘Cause right now, I… Right now, I don’t believe in a damn thing.

at least you're acknowledging the cognitive dissonance, dean-o :p

and i guess cas get back to earth by virtue of annoying the empty entity, okay. i briefly had some feelings with the music swelling when cas woke up in the field however then it turned into panflute?? and the feelings were gone :p which leads into this...

was watching the last little bit of e3 where cas wakes up and the soundtrack gets different/a little interesting - has this choral element that reminds me a bit of the (far superior) musical score in the expanse. the title sequence makes me weep lol. anyway, the spn thing, the voices transition into strings-ish? but i wonder if the score was all done electronically, or how much was done with instrumentation. i know nuts and bolts of how a couple smaller tv and movie score composers work, but i don't know what the norm is - especially on a (i presume) lower budget show. and i wondered if that's why it often feels flat. i dunno. he just switches up genres and sounds with no real rhyme or reason, sometimes i think it sounds like he heard someone do something cool and then sorta.. cribs it, and we get the knockoff. sigh. this poor dude. raggin on him almost daily.

i'm the opposite of effective at getting anyone to ever watch anything, but really. it's such a good show, from start to finish.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Unpleasantness

The migraine is still hanging on. The physical pain is a little less horrific, at least, but gods, I would like my head to stop hurting now, please.

Work seems to be getting back onto something like an even keel, though I'm still having to push a little harder than I should to get the backlog under control, because gods know no one else speeds up at times like these. At least New Girl didn't pull her shit again today. If I didn't mention New Girl's Shit ... well, it's a little stunt she pulls that is now common enough to be very clearly deliberate:

Collects a bunch of typing from the queue, even some of the longer stuff

Types the short dictations in her personal queue

Refills her personal queue with more short dictations, avoiding the long ones this time

Repeats 2 and 3 over the course of the day until about 4:50pm

Dumps the long ones (which by now are dated the previous day, most of the time) back into the queue, obliging the people still typing to prioritise them

Picks up another couple of short ones "because that's all I have time to do!"

Leaves

Like, I leave at 5:30 on Thursdays and Fridays. So I end up with those just left for me. And Goblin, though I may not particularly enjoy her company, works until 5:30 every day, so she gets it worse. It doesn't matter that I don't like Goblin as a person; neither of us deserve that bullshit.

Anyway, she didn't manage to do it today. Though I did get stuck with an ungodly number of hemicolectomy reports.

So ... yeah. I want to play video games, or talk about the demos I've found on the Steam Next Fest this time around, or something ... buuuut my head is killing me and ... well, my pain level is not "horrific" but it is "bad". Sooooooo ... y'know. I guess I'll have to stop at whingeing about the fact that the last few days have been shit. Not expecting much better out of tomorrow, honestly.

I swear, I wish it wasn't so awkward to call out sick when working from home. Like, I'm going to have to if the migraine gets any worse but the last time I had such a bad pain day I could barely move, I got Scruffman saying, "Is there anything that we can do to make that less of a thing?" and I'm like, "I HAVE FIBROMYALGIA; SOMETIMES I'M JUST GOING TO HURT FOR NO REASON!"

I have having limitations. So much.

[one-boring-person]

What Kind Of A World Are We Living In?

The Lost Boys x The Walking Dead Crossover

Warnings: blood imagery, death, some very vague TWD spoilers, bad language

Context: So @browneyes528 , @lostbetweenvampiresandmusic and I kinda came up with an idea for a crossover between these fandoms, and it basically entails David meeting Negan for the first time.

A/N: This is my first time writing Negan, so I hope it's not too bad! I enjoyed writing this; it's quite fun to combine the things I enjoy 😂😅💛

Masterlist.

Originally, David had made it clear that he wanted no part in joining any groups they came across on their travels, impressing this on the boys on multiple occasions, especially when "food" was scarce. Even before he'd turned, he'd never been a particularly social person, so the outbreak of "biters" as one group they'd encountered had called them was perfect for his naturally guarded personality, as it meant he never had to interact with people he didn't like as much as he used to, back in Santa Carla in the good old days. Only one problem came with the outbreak: the amount of available people to feed on was slowly decreasing, and the biters do not taste nearly as good.

However, this changed when he came across a rather interesting character, whose name he had yet to figure out, whilst on a hunt, the others having spread out through the area to find possible sources of blood. For once, David was walking through the dense forest rather than flying over it, avoiding the biters wherever possible, easily decapitating those that stumbled too close to him with the machete he "borrowed" from a previous victim, though in theory there was no need to do so, seeing as they didn't seem to care about the taste of vampire flesh, and their bites wouldn't do anything to them anyway. He'd started to give up hope of finding any source of life, until he picked up the sounds of voices a little way off, interest spiking as he headed off in that direction, hunger growing as the familiar scent of fresh blood reached him, the smell clearly emanating from a large area ahead of him. Following with more vigour, he soon came across the odd gathering of people; a semi-circle of sorts was formed around an old RV, a number of them kneeling on the floor in front of a horde of armed soldier-type men and women. Vehicles surrounded them, a collection of armoured trucks and pickups, as well as a couple of motorbikes (which he greatly envied, seeing as he and the boys had had to leave theirs back in Santa Carla for lighter travel) solidifying the would-be intimidating group into an almost impenetrable wall. Normally, he'd signal for the other boys to join him, there being too many for him to finish off alone, but something stopped him in his tracks. Or rather, someone.

A tall man went to the RV, having said something relevant to the kneeling people, opening the door to reveal another man, who stepped into the light with a large grin on his face. Instantly, David's focus was on the newcomer, eyebrow raising at his choice of attire - a black leather jacket, red scarf and dark jeans, though what really caught his eye was the baseball bat, which was wrapped in barbed wire, a deadly weapon he wished he could see in action. Despite the circumstances (it being an apocalypse and all), the newcomer was clean and undirtied, as if he had somewhere to return to where he could shower and change into clean clothes, and his entire attitude around the gathered people only proved to David that this man was the leader.

His eyes remained fixed on him, taking in the laid-back, yet clearly authoritative stance and movements, not listening to what was being said until the familiar sound of an old song floated up to him from the leader, each line punctuated by a point of the bat at a kneeling person, all of whom appeared terrified.

"Eeny, meeny, miny, mo, catch a tiger by his toe..."

The black-clad leader's voice was taunting, his fingers visibly clenching around the handle of the bat as he came to a halt in front of a thick-set ginger guy, who stared up the length of the weapon with a confidence only bred in the military.

David could only watch with grudging  appreciation as the leader then proceeded to beat the hell out of the guy's head, spreading the ginger man's brains all over the dusty tarmac with a brutal finality.

It only took the sight of this to change David's mind about joining a group, his mind made up as he watched the leader tease and taunt the rest of the group, nearly rising in anger when a dishevelled brunette sprung forward to punch him in the jaw, smirking to himself when another guy had his head smashed to pieces in retaliation. This guy knew how to demonstrate his ultimate dominance over his people.

Unfortunately, he had to wait another few weeks or so until he got the chance to meet this guy again, at which point he'd already informed the others of this new group he had found, eager to figure out what this guy's reaction would be to finding a coven of vampires asking to ally with him. To say the boys had been surprised was an understatement; Paul nearly fell from the roof they were perched on, Dwayne only just managing to pull him back up again, Marko staring, wide-eyed, at his leader. Unsurprisingly, they had all wanted to see this guy for themselves, not quite believing that a human could be as brutal and remorseless as David made him out to be, thus starting a search for the base of these people, though it was mostly unsuccessful, until one summer night.

The four of them hovered over the decrepit motorway below, eyes searching for any signs of movements, each of them as bored as the others, having had less luck finding food in the last few weeks, seeing as everyone seemed to be letting themselves die in ways that meant they would become a biter, which was not helpful at all. By now, they'd been out for a good four hours, their hunger levels through the roof - they'd only found a group of two loners the day before, meaning that they hadn't eaten nearly enough to satisfy them. At his point, Marko and Paul decided they needed to start acting dramatic, theatrically dropping from the sky every now and then, only to catch themselves after a few metres, complaining about how tired and hungry they were the entire time, neither of them letting up, even when Dwayne threatened to stake them both. They were whinging so much they never noticed the little band of people on the motorway below them, the tiny group having just emerged from the trees lining the side of the road, until David pointed them out, licking his lips in anticipation, his vampiric features contorting his face as he led the dive down.

Whooping in triumph and relief, the four of them descended on the group of five, each of them claiming a victim right off the bat, tearing into their chosen person with a vigour born of deep-rooted hunger, blood erupting in macabre fountains from the newly made wounds. The rich fluid coated their chins and fangs, staining their already filthy clothes further as the screaming people writhe and struggle in their respective grips, each one gradually dying in full view of the fifth, who had yet to race off in the other direction, which would've been the smart thing to do. As it happened, the horrified girl never stood a chance, swiftly being taken out by David as he took his fill from her, passing her barely alive body on to an eagerly waiting Paul, who was only to happy to sink his fangs into her skin, tearing her throat out with a grim efficiency.

In their feeding frenzy, none of them had noticed the envoy of vehicles slowly approaching from the north, a familiar RV amongst them, until the beaming headlights were focused on them, drawing the vampires' attention. Dropping the corpses, each vampire moved to stand beside David, who stuck his gloved hands in his pockets and watched the cars approach, smirking at the realisation of who it is, glad that their first encounter involved him covered in fresh blood from a victim he just spent a few enjoyable minutes tearing to pieces, knowing that his appearance must be horrifying. Beside him, the others stood their ground, Marko moving to bite at his thumb, only to swiftly think better of it, hooking it in the belt loops of his jeans instead. Ahead of them, each vehicle came to a halt, a group of armed people stepping forward with rifles and shotguns aimed at them, a sight which brought a slight grin to David's lips, the door to the RV opening to reveal the guy from before, a somewhat confused yet confident expression on his face.

"It's nearly two in the morning and I have to sort out a bunch of cannibals on the road? What kinda world are we living in?!" The leader joked with one of his cronies, eyeing the motley group of blood stained boys with no trepidation at all.

"A dying one, I reckon." David called out to him in way of response, their eyes locking, almost as if challenging each other.

"Well, then I guess it all depends on who you ask, don't it?" A wide grin appeared on the guy's face as he looked David over, clearly impressed by what he saw, "Damn, you are creepy as shit! You look totally badass!"

David's eyes narrowed a bit at his words, suspicious of the guy's odd compliments.

"If that's what you think, then sure." He responded, choosing his words carefully.

"What I think? Hell, no, that's not what I think. It's what I know." He confirmed, leaning back on his heels, his bat resting over one shoulder, "I'm Negan."

"David."

"David? Your name is David? I'm gonna have to figure out something better than that, something more badass."

For once, David chose not to let his offense at the statement determine how he acted, instead remaining in place with a neutral expression.

"If you must." He bit out, deciding to get straight to the point, "We've been looking for you."

Surprise seemed to cross Negan's face at this confession, eyebrows momentarily drawing together in confusion.

"You've been looking for me? Why in the hell would you do that?"

"I saw you beat two people's heads in a few weeks back, and you left a good impression on me. I thought you might like the help of four vampires in your group, who have no qualms about killing anyone." David informed him, nearly rolling his eyes at the disbelieving look on their faces.

"I left a good impression on someone like you because I beat the shit outta two people? Damn, you are messed up, I'll give you that." Negan smirked, pointing at David with his bat, "But I cannot give you the vampire bullshit. Who in the hell still believes in them?"

"People with sense." He grinned in reply, his features changing into their vampiric forms, lips peeling back to reveal his razor sharp fangs.

For a long moment, everyone is silent, Negan's eyes fixed on David's face, clearly taken aback by the turn of events, though the smile is quick to return.

"I owe you damn apology, David, that is terrifying. Like real, pant-pissing, shitting-yourself terrifying." He complimented again, seemingly considering something, "You still up for helping me out? Because I have a job that I think will suit you guys just fine."

"Sure thing, as long as the price is decent."

Negan stepped forwards, bat back on his shoulder, a conspiratorial smirk on his lips.

"There's a certain group of people who need the shit scaring outta them. Their leader is a prick named Rick, or Rick the Prick as I call him, and he needs an attitude adjustment."

[definitelynotplanetfall]

Good Day, May I trouble you for some examples of the books you did like, before you lost the ability to enjoy fiction? I could not guess at it, and am quite curious. Also, what would your writing be, if there were no question of skill involved, no obstacles? How would you describe the thing you would want to have written? I do hope this is not too intrusive or impudent - I ventured to presume from your posts that conversation might not be entirely unwelcome. Best Wishes & Regards ~

Conversation is indeed welcome, it pushes back the void. Sorry to have taken so long to get back on this, I was considering how best to respond - it's this, apparently.

If you're asking looking for recommendations I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. In terms of "real" fiction I remember liking The Shadow of the Wind (though I cannot for the life of me remember why, exactly, since in retrospect I'd expect it to mess with various anxieties), and Les Misérables, which is admittedly more canonical than deep. That about rounds it out for things that won't get you raucously laughed out of the library.

For those of you keeping score: Hugo is wordy in the same manner as an odd uncle that goes off on interesting tangents, and Dickens is wordy in the same manner as someone narrating a simple activity by listing component actions of component actions of component actions.

Never quite managed to pick up a taste for short stories.

Then you have your Things Fake Nerds Read To Pretend To Be Nerds, so your Hitchhiker's Guide and Discworld mostly. Not much to say there except I have no idea why everyone keeps whinging about the first two Discworld books, I thought they were pretty good.

(I am not saying that everyone who read those things is a fake nerd, just that everyone who read *only* them is. I read only them.)

Then what’s left is the kid stuff, which in no particular order... ASOUE, Artemis Fowl, The Keys to the Kingdom, Abhorsen, The Mysterious Benedict Society, The Name Of This Series Is Secret, Guardians of Ga'Hoole and I'm certain something is missing from this list but I can't think of it. I have, may hell forgive me, the first five Maximum Ride books, but that was more a thing I tolerated in the earliest stages of getting burned out to get people off my back about Why Don't You Read As Much These Days. At least I realized Harry Potter wasn't all it was cracked up to be by the third installment.

Artemis Fowl gets dishonorable mention because most of the time I found Artemis himself too awful to root for and the main draw was the secret technologically advanced fairy society, and also because it somehow managed to get away with naming a book [series name]: THE TIME PARADOX in 2008(!) which led me to vastly underestimate the extent to which time travel had media saturation and think I could blow people away with The Previous Thing, But With Time Travel -

hang on, funny story, at this point in time I did know doctor who existed but I had only seen Blink with no captions and the sound almost off and therefore was dead certain for several years that it was some fancy artsy show that I was too young and stupid to comprehend -

and The Name Of This Series Is Secret gets dishonorable mention because the ending was kind of unsatisfying, and because the real name is The Secret Series which is a terrible name I refuse to use.

If you're thinking, yeah, but everyone read those, what's the real stuff, the identifying stuff, well... there's probably some books I genuinely enjoyed that I'm forgetting but for the most part I'm an uncultured. But I came from a family of even worse uncultureds absolutely convinced they're the pinnacle of intellectual curiosity and literacy, so there was endless praise for doing less than minimum. I was worse-read than every other magnet kid, even the ones that didn't really want to read, and that certainly felt bad, but as long as I was better read than the traditional kids - who for too long I was convinced were "just dumb" because of instilled elitism and Other Things Of That Nature - that was what mattered and I didn't bother to read more because I was already always tired.

I am the thing that everyone with impostor syndrome fears they are. Which, yes, is a cliche, but consider: they gave me a degree, and I just used a cliche! That's textbook Actual Impostor!

As for what my writing would be - even assuming infinite skill, the tongue-in-cheek answer is true here: it would be bad.

I barely remember the exact reasons behind wanting to write but I'm mostly certain it was a cop-out to get adults off my case about career paths mixed with a couple random story ideas that I cranked out because kids have infinite energy and no standards. But really, the only unifying aspects of the things I wrote or planned to write or any of that was... some kind of science fiction element, very broadly defined? If you want a more specific definition of an individual story the last concept I was holding on to was basically "distilled bad YA because I hadn't read enough bad YA to know what is overused." The last thing with a describable-without-breaking-down-crying-realizing-how-bad-it-is premise was "hospital in popularity contest hellworld focuses on being maximally shiny to the detriment of patients, rogue staff get shit done in secret."

Apologies if this is rambly and not answering the question, it's just I'm not sure "the thing you would want to have written" actually refers to any idea I can really reconstruct. Or rather I can reconstruct the idea but not the mental state to know which one I would have preferred to work on, if that makes any sense.

Thanks for your curiosity, if you made it this far.

[thesinglesjukebox]

VAMPIRE WEEKEND - HARMONY HALL [7.10] So I was going to re-use one of our taglines from previous entries as a hat-tip to self-referencing, but none of them made sense in context. So you'll have to make do with editorial whingeing instead.

Joshua Copperman: Like most people, I pressed play expecting to gawk at how much of a mess this is, and "Harmony Hall" initially sounds like the slick, misguided pop crossover everyone feared, but the melancholy edge of Modern Vampires is both less noticeable and more present than ever. An early Vampire Weekend song could start with that guitar riff, but not the low, warm synth pad. Even Modern Vampires would be gloriously cluttered with sounds, yet Manny Marroquin's mix is intensely spacious -- the choirs panned to the left and stay there, the delays ping-ponging then abruptly cutting out. No one listens to Vampire Weekend for social commentary, but Koenig goes beyond "Trump bad," instead focusing on the return of hate groups and the reemergence of anti-semitism (hiding that particular vulnerability "beneath these velvet gloves"). The callback to "I don't want to live like this/but I don't want to die" works because how tired it sounds. The line was gleeful and drawn-out in 2013, but in 2019 it's just a throwaway line to nod to the default mood. Another week, a thousand media jobs laid off, another hate crime, another swastika on a college campus, every refresh of a Twitter feed another potential verse of "Love It If We Made It" (obviously intentional on Matt Healy's part.) This isn't happy-but-secretly-sad; it's what happy sounds like when sad is normal. [9]

Ian Mathers: I think I emitted an audible little laugh in my cubicle when I first heard "I don't want to live like this, but I don't want to die" (you and me both, buddy). Something about that "Sympathy for the Devil" rolling percussion and the piano and even Ezra Koenig's current delivery makes this mostly sound like something I might have heard on oldies radio on a family road trip when I was a kid (i.e. before they added the 80s and 90s to those stations), except... better? I don't know, every time I think I'm done with these guys they grab me again somehow. I guess you can sign me up for [checks stories about new album]... Father of the Bride. Sigh. [8]

Claire Biddles: Vampire Weekend are virtuosos at encapsulating a very evocative (and I hate to say it, very millennial) melancholic yearning: a hyper-specific nostalgia for the recent past. How delicious, then, to find this distilled not just in the lyrical content, but conceptually: a callback to an album track from five years ago, when our troubles felt so huge. [7]

Thomas Inskeep: Starts out sounding like wimpy early '70s male folk, and by just past the chorus it's almost got a '73 Stones vibe going (we're this close to a gospel choir coming in, and yes, that was a vibraslap) -- so is this their Arcade Fire arena move? The biggest problem here is that, it's still Vampire Weekend, so it's still all too wimpy. [4]

Katie Gill: This is a friggin' weird song. The beautiful discordance of the depressing lyrics with the bubbly sound makes sense. The surprise piano solo in the middle of the song kind of makes sense. But I just can't wrap my head around why this song sounds so intensely dorky. Is it the plinky piano background? Is it that dumb percussion bit before "anger wants a voice"? Is it the Is it the fact that it's 2019 and I'm getting Paul Simon flashbacks? Seriously, swap out that piano for a horn section and you've got the b-side to "You Can Call Me Al." No matter what, you have to hand it to Vampire Weekend. They've certainly made something with a unique sound and something that I suspect will be talked about for weeks, if not months. [7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: With "Harmony Hall," Koenig's revealed himself as having anxieties aplenty, and it's loudly signaled with a self-referential lyric ("I don't wanna live like this, but I don't wanna die"). There's grief caused by the corruption hidden inside seemingly honorable institutions, and the song's chipper and (regrettably) Grateful Dead-like instrumentation mimics this duplicity. But more than this, such revelations have found Koenig reflecting on his own identity -- as a musician, as a Jewish-American, as a member of the upper middle class -- and what he can do. In hearing the guitar figure constantly repeat, one becomes privy to its false sense of security: "I thought that I was free from all that questioning/But every time a problem ends, another one begins." The melody's smooth ascent and cascading descent is an unmistakable Dave Longstreth contribution, but this fact doesn't make "Harmony Hall" any less about Koenig's personal turmoil; it finds him stepping out to unearth concrete answers. [5]

Josh Love: Vampire Weekend are valedictorians of indie's last decade, having not made a significant misstep, cranking out the consistently tuneful and clever alt-pop that's made them a hip millennial's staple and a top-shelf critical darling. Unlike say MIA or LCD Soundsystem or Arcade Fire, they've never seemed like overreaching or underdelivering, all of their endeavors perfectly-coiffed. After a lengthy hiatus, not a hair's out of place and you can't point to anything being demonstrably wrong here. What's worrying though is that "Harmony Hall" accomplishes in five minutes no more than it could have managed in half that time. The first couple of verses and chorus are catchy, smart, and sufficiently dynamic, Koenig meditating on Jewishness and doing call-backs to the even more faith-informed "Finger Back" from the band's last album, over a piano lick that puts me in mind of Andrea True Connection's "More, More, More," or more more more specifically, the better song that nicked it, Len's "Steal My Sunshine." Too bad the last half of "Harmony Hall" is all diminishing returns; I kept waiting for something to make this elongated running time worthwhile but the back end offers nothing more than a baroque passage and a new piano flourish or two. Hopefully this song's not entirely a harbinger for the remainder of Father of the Bride; I'd hate for Vampire Weekend to have aged into being that former head of the class who's a self-satisfied bore at the reunion. [6]

Vikram Joseph: I've always associated Vampire Weekend with clear, sparkling late winter days; there's something about their sound that lends itself to that kind of light, and a wide-eyed optimism that suggests warmer days might not be far off. Fitting, then, that "Harmony Hall" should appear now; they've never sounded so crisp, so open or just so much like Paul Simon. The intricate Baroque guitar and flurries of electric piano are accoutrements which could render a song starchy and formal, but Vampire Weekend carry them off with effortless flair and a nonchalant grin. Ezra Koenig alludes deftly, though unambiguously, to politics; "Anger needs a voice/voices wanna sing/Singers harmonise 'til they can't hear anything" is a pretty eloquent description of the chaos of current discourse. Much like a young Stuart Murdoch sang with just the right combination of pathos and conspiratorial wit to pull off Belle & Sebastian's red-wine-stained stories of sexual misadventure and tentative affection, Koenig's voice has an intoxicating blend of empathy, lightness and desperation which in the past has allowed him to get away with a lot of highbrow wordplay, and which here makes the song's headline ("I don't wanna live like this, but I don't wanna die") feel like both a weary joke and a howl of personal, political despair that rings out through decades. Musically, though, "Harmony Hall" is a fleet-footed thing of joy, the balletic "ooooh"s in the post-chorus like arcs strung out across the country, a reminder that beauty exists even in dark times. [9]

Matias Taylor: Getting the words to dance as much as that nimble piano line is tricky, but six years on Vampire Weekend's lyrical and melodic gifts are as sharp as ever. [9]

Alfred Soto: As allusive as usual -- I hear George Michael, "Mrs. Robinson," their own "Finger Back" -- the latest from the sometime quartet, an-album-every-six-years men of leisure, affirms their faith in keeping them from the brink of the great surrender. "I thought I was free from all that questioning," Ezra Koenig yelps, a self-deception. He's smarter than that. Yet he clings to his arpeggios as a grandmother to a handrail. He knows music. It won't keep him safe. [7]

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