Vampire Weekend
Contra
XL Recordings
Rating: 8.5/10
Sophomore albums from bands are always highly scrutinized. In anticipation of the new album, listeners are never quite sure if the band will think too much about what it’s going to do next, or if the recording is going be heavy-handed on studio overproduction. After all, it seems like almost every band wants to have a ‘bigger’ and ‘bolder’ sound on its follow-up to a successful debut; bands want to retain a core essence, while maintaining that their sounds have ‘matured’ and ‘grown.’ Few bands truly get to accomplish this on their next album.
However, Vampire Weekend lives up to the underground-come-mainstream ‘hype’ it brought on its self-titled debut. Its sophomore attempt, Contra, refines and expands the band’s sound without losing any essence of originality. Ezra Koenig once again writes cerebral lyrics for intelligent indie-worldpop — the type of lyrics that make listeners want to know exactly what horchata is — yet simultaneously blunt enough to understand the themes of songs like “Giving Up the Gun.” When Koening sings “In the shadow of your first attack/I was questioning and looking back/You said baby we don’t speak of that/Like a real aristocrat,” on “Big Taxi,” the listener gains a sense that the band struggles with personal issues with the thin line dividing elitism and low-brow. This is further complicated with the addition of light string orchestration.
Meanwhile, producer Rostam Batmanglij has more heavily integrated the electro-pop of his side project, Discovery. “California English” steals the same autotuned vocals, while allowing the band to not overthink what it’s already accomplished on its debut. ”Run” sounds like “One (Blake’s Got a New Name),” while “Horchata” has a bouncy, marching band cadence, reminiscent of “Glosoli” from Sigur Rós’s Takk.
But “A-Punk” from the self-titled debut, Contra‘s first single, ”Cousins” is frenetic, edgy and disjointed from rest of the album. Sadly, the album also ends on a rather weak, undeveloped note — despite its abundance of instrumentation. ”I Think Ur a Contra” is arranged like another Sigur Rós song from () — even sounding like Stars at points — but doesn’t quite hit the goals of the rest of the album.
Comparisons to Animal Collective are apt and all over the place for Contra, what with the Afro-beat on “Holiday” or the jangly “White Sky,” for example. But where Contra continues to allow Vampire Weekend to shine is its in delightful sprinklings of electro-synth-marimbas over running string compositions (“Run”). Is it perfect? Not really, but it’s an largely whimsical sophomore attempt.
