VAMPIRE WEEKEND – CONTRA
Did you ever listen to Vampire Weekend’s debut and, laughing and dancing all the while, wish they sounded just a little bit more like Animal Collective? Your wish has been granted. Which means that Contra is not a very interesting album. Everything you already liked is here: the faux-afro guitar licks and accompanying exotic sound, the hummable hooks, the idiosyncratic lyrical turns about life’s little idiosyncrasies. Now Vampire Weekend sport the arpeggios and syncopated rhythms of your favourite post-dance indie bands; so this is the album for you, and you will like it. For everyone who answered ‘NO’ to the initial query … but you already guessed it isn’t really worth a look-in. Don’t listen to people who tell you Contra is a more mature album. The introspective songs are cookie-cutter Coldplay, and the ‘development’ in the Vampire Weekend sound is superficial at best: string pads, reverb and drum machine overdubs. We should, however, make an exception for the first single, Cousins, because Cousins is the best song on the album, and the best thing Vampire Weekend have ever done. It is fast, driven by a hot rhythm section, covered in punked-up guitars, and very short. So. Buy the single.
*
