Vampire Weekend

for The Weekly Feed

Vampire Weekend
Contra
2010

Vampire Weekend is really taking it on the chin these days. It seems that their ability to divide people into virulent camps rivals left-leaning politics at one of those tea bagger parties. Maybe like those events, it wasn’t necessarily representative of the majority, but the critics were loud and obnoxious enough to make it seem so. I’m pretty sure that Vampire Weekend will be number one on Billboard this week with their new album Contra, so maybe they’re rightly unconcerned about a few hyper vocal critics.

Contra turns out to be a mélange of mid-eighties pop-centric Caribbean/African experiments, with nods in all directions, from Elvis Costello sans-attitude, to the Police’s Synchronicity, a bit of Zep’s Fool In The Rain, and the ubiquitous comparison to Graceland. The premise seems to have been: “What if a cocktail shaker could hold Mento, Latin, African, Calypso, Caribbean and American Indie Pop, and what if a calypso breakdown weren’t a breakdown, but an entire song?” It has all the bloops and bleeps a modern indie record with smart production requires, contributing to what in the end will be a very successful record, and rightfully so. It’s also a bit of a genre-bender, with its’ aforementioned ethnic tangents given a ska-dub-electro-pop twist. Contra succeeds if only because it reaches for something different than everyone else right now.

The album opens with Horchata, an upbeat island number driven by the backbone of a straight kick drum with the fluttering of vocal melodies and plunky keys that, like half of the album, make you long for your old Casio keyboard you had in the late eighties. That theme continues throughout, incorporating strong, anxious rhythms with frenetic melodies, often throwing in a swirl of wispy ethereal background vocal breaths. Standouts include the understated, groovy dub in the tasteful use of space of the palette cleansing Taxi Cab, as well as the gyrating Giving Up The Gun. Cousins is the first single, with Run sure to follow, both fitting in the context of the album as a whole. Occasional trouble arises in the squeaky upper register falsetto, essentially bits of White Sky and Run, but overall the melodies are strong and memorable enough to hold their own.

Controversy and critics aside, Contra is a solid album, especially given the fact that it was so highly anticipated and the pressure was on to deliver. And they seem to take more than a bit of joy at bringing that cocktail shaker to the middle of a Tea Party and serving any who care to join them.

Brian S. Meurer