By: David Schultz


Vampire Weekend hasn’t deviated significantly from the formula that simultaneously delighted and irked so many back in 2008. Ezra Koenig’s still showing off his multisyllabic and now multicultural vocabulary, most pronouncedly on the lilting opening track “Horchata,” and “Holiday” and “Cousins” have the same brash Afropop punk feel as anything from their debut. They aren’t remaining complacent either: “White Sky” makes it sound like they’ve added Animal Collective to their steady Paul Simon rotation and “Run” and “Giving Up The Gun” find Chris Thomson and Chris Baio adding a booming electronica backbeat. “Diplomat’s Son,” cloaks itself in the pomposity of progressive rock; it’s mainly six minutes of bad reggae but its easily the Vampire Weekend’s most daring effort to date.

The album’s closing track, “I Think Ur A Contra,” abandons everything you’ve come to expect from a Vampire Weekend song. Setting aside bouncy rhythms, Koenig’s high-pitched voice trembles and warbles over ethereal ambience as he eruditely chastises a lover he no longer trusts. The hurt and indignation infused into the lyrics meshes incongruously with the pleasant atmospheric vibe with the result being one of the finer uses of the band’s subtle ingenuity. All the Ivy League jokes and cultural colonialism discussions can’t obscure the fact that Contra stakes out Vampire Weekend’s claim to be treated as more than a fleeting reference to the dialogue they’ve started.

Labels: Vampire Weekend