Vampire Weekend
Contra (iTunes)
January 12th, 2010
XL Recordings
 

Vampire Weekend - "Diplomat's Son"

Vampire Weekend - "Holiday"

Vampire Weekend's much anticipated sophomore album Contra was waiting for a beating when it landed on my desk, due to their over-privileged preppy image and utterly boring performance at Lollapalooza. But after a few listens through the foursomes’ impressive cheerful variety, from Paul Simon to M.I.A. and, yes, afro-pop, mixed with catchy lyrics had me humming and singing—to my co-writers’ disapproval—“Cousins” and “Diplomat’s Son” well after the album was over. I wanted to hate this album, but what can I say, the songs aren’t half bad and it has a relaxing flow to it. I might not seek Contra out on my iTunes, but if I were still living in the dorms trying to pull chicks, this would be an instant go-to.

Blown away by their first and self-titled album’s success, “We felt we could we do it again, and we had enough faith in ourselves,” said drummer Chris Tomson to The Village Voice. The theme of Contra being “California,” in all its vague glory, but makes sense with songs about family vacations and chilled Mexican rice milk—that’s all horchata really is. The wide-open theme allowed Vampire Weekend to make an album that experiments with all sorts of sounds that range from a Paul Simon impersonator to African dance halls, but at the end they—impressively—all make sense with the sum tone of Contra. But the fact that they based it on memories of Cali while recorded in New York City challenges its validity of a California experience. 

Vampire Weekend still acknowledges the WASPy Cape Cod image that they pushed hard during their debut, but have tried to move away from recently—they can’t be interviewed without being asked if they're wearing boat shoes. They make it so hard to disconnect them from everything I hate about Ivy League. Maybe it’s because my school called itself the Ivy League of the west. And you know they were the kids you saw wearing grey button downs in Madison Square Park strumming an acoustic guitar and struggling through Bob Dylan lyrics.

Regardless of their clean cut—verging on boring—image, I was impressed by their adoption of the mellowed out indie movement we’re seeing with bands like The xx and Animal Collective towards relaxing sing-a-long style over a fast rhythm. This soothing trend is a drastic move away from the dance-craze that has dominated the indie genre for the tail end of the last decade. But what makes this album really stand out in the indie-rock sub-genre is Vampire Weekend’s use of afro-pop and bringing it to mainstream American culture. “From early on we said we wanted to have an indie rock band, but we wanted to open our ears,” says Tomson. But it takes away from the auto-tuned afro-vibe when vocals, Ezra Koenig, starts singing about Philly cheese steaks on “Holiday.”

Because of who they are and where they’re from I want to like this album less, even though I know I shouldn’t. Wearing crisp button downs, pressed khaki pants and sitting in Columbia University’s surrounding coffee shops is just such a big part of their identity that it’s hard to disconnect their catchy international-pop sound from their D-bag image. And ruining horchata for me is not helping their case. However, I like singing along to Contra’s best song “Diplomat's Son”—not even sarcastically—and have to put the members’ scholastic history behind them and admit, I like this album to the point where if it came on my stereo I wouldn’t change it, and don’t care if I get shit for giving it as high a rating as 3 out of 5 rating.