In the 2000s “These Days” gained renewed visibility and praise. The key was the appearance of the original Nico recording in a scene in the acclaimed and popular 2001 Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums. Both the song and the film’s characters carried similar themes of regret and fear of missed opportunities.^[4] As Jackson Browne would later describe it, “I forgot that I’d licensed them to use this song. And this is one of those things that comes to you in the mail and you don’t know what they’re talking about and you simply give them their permission. You’re sitting in the movie theater and there’s this great moment when Gwyneth Paltrow is coming out of a bus or something like that. I’m thinking to myself, I used to play the guitar just like that. And then the voice comes on and it’s Nico singing ‘These Days’, which I played on.”^[9]

Wes Anderson’s forthcoming Moonrise Kingdom—which boasts an all-star ensemble that includes Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, and Frances McDormand—already had the requisite Bill Murray quotient, but you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s still not a real Wes Anderson movie for lack of Jason Schwartzman. So relax, gentle people: Schwartzman has officially signed on, and with a 1960s setting guaranteeing at least one Kinks song, and a subplot that involves Bill Murray playing a cuckolded sad clown, nearly all of the elements for a Wes Anderson film are now in place. As of now there are no Wilson brothers attached, and we’ve yet to see a single Futura font, but all these things in their time. [via AV Club]

On their 2008 debut, Vampire Weekend whipped up a new pop formula by fusing Paul Simon’s Graceland with the touchstones of preppy ennui — Cape Cod summers, collegiate grief, crushes on girls with trust funds. The music had a bracing smartness, as overdetermined and detailed as a Wes Anderson movie, almost perfect for what it was, but you wondered how they’d handle the real world.

Just fine, it turns out. If Vampire Weekend was Rushmore, Contra is their Royal Tenenbaums: brainy, confident and generally awesome. Where much of the first album’s charm was conceptual — Ivy League guys mashing up J.D. Salinger and King Sunny Adé — here the band has put on some muscle…

Koenig still comes across as a kid who brings his laundry home to Mom, but now he’s kicking around midtown Manhattan (“White Sky”) and realizing that dating a rich girl isn’t an excuse to be a dick (“Taxi Cab”). The album ends with the brutal, orchestral quiet of “I Think UR a Contra”: “You wanted good schools and friends with pools,” he tells an ex in a wounded boyish falsetto. “Well, I just wanted you.” It’s powerful and disconcerting — and shows there’s a lot more to Vampire Weekend than cleverness and bright colors. There’s soul, too.

The “Contra” cover really does it for me too.

I’m really looking forward to it.

Wes Anderson’s newest venture may be an animated take on a classic kids’ story, but from its corduroy-clad characters to its cozy look at family dysfunction, Fantastic Mr. Fox is classic work from the director of Rushmore, The Royal Tennenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited. Rolling Stone caught up with Anderson, who wrote the film’s screenplay with Noah Baumbach at original author Roald Dahl’s own home, and Jason Schwartzman, who voices Mr. Fox’s misunderstood son Ash.