awesometown.

ohmeohyou:

2008 was a great year for Vampire Weekend; they’re self titled debut blew up on the scene and with good reason.  It was all album that, unlike other indie rock albums of the time, felt good.  It was new, exciting, and extremely catchy.  With songs like “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” and “M79,” listeners got a taste of a band that somehow was able to release multi-layered albums with that mainstream feel.  And it was good.

The true test of time for Vampire Weekend, though, was the song “Ottoman” on the soundtrack to the 2008 film Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist.  To me, it showed a shift in the band, with a song a little bit closer to “I Stand Corrected,” while retaining that upbeat feel.  And, when the song finally builds to it’s chorus, everything seems to go right.  Following this, over a year later, is “Contra.”  It’s definitely that sophomore album people have been waiting for, but then again, it’s not the self titled debut.  First of all, for the most part, it’s not as good.  In fact, most of the songs don’t come near something from that 2008 album’s feel.  Obviously it a more grown up, mature feeling from the band, but it’s also more complex and hard to follow.  There’s songs that pass by in a couple minutes, and others that take nearly six, which is something I wasn’t expecting from Vampire Weekend.

I don’t know when it was recorded, but “Contra” feels like a winter album.  Their first album had that quality to it; the one where you can wake up to it in the summer, go to work, come on, and lay out listening to it.  In fact, that album defined my 2008 summer.  ”Contra,” however, probably won’t do that to the winter (especially with albums like “Teen Dream,” “Odd Blood,” and “Astro Coast” out there).  That’s not to say it isn’t good, but it’s confusing and it isn’t easy to listen to.  One has to hand it to the band, however, for making an album still relatively experimental when they were on the verge of being strictly mainstream.

The album opens with “Horchata,” which you have most likely heard by now, and is catchy enough for that first single.  It’s not a great song, but it’s not a bad one either.  It shows where the band is going to go in the coming forty minutes.  I might have liked a more preamble of an opening (see: “In The Flowers,” “The Children,” or any Deerhunter opening), however that’s just me.  It’s a song, all right, much like Grizzly Bear’s opening “Southern Point,” which I also wasn’t very fond of.  After that is “White Sky,” which at first play sounds like a filler tracker, but it still a pretty good one.  It’s a lot closer to that original Vampire feelings, but also brings in new sounds; a much more electronic one, which is probably due to the side project Discovery that came out over the summer.  There’s this annoying thing Ezra Koenig seems to do with his voice during the chorus, a kind of yelping noise, but one can get over that.  ”Holiday” isn’t anything special and it sounds more like the band was simply having a jam session than a real song.  It’s also a lot like “Cousins” for the most part, perhaps a little bit better.  Maybe it could serve as a more summer song than the rest of the album.  ”California English” is really a waste of time, because it’s way to crazy and way more like “Carby” off of Discovery’s debut album, but not in a good way.  ”Taxi Cab,” however, is when the album really starts.  When the band finally calms down enough to put out a real song like this, the outcome is stunningly beautiful.  It shows the band in a much more mature light than its previous songs and this theme is continued in “Run,” which is a much more ominous piece than anything previously put out by the band.  It’s still good though, because it shows that the band is willing to try new things and for the most part, it pays off.

Next, however, is “Cousins,” a song I can’t really stand.  From the second it begins, it’s back to that yelping from Koenig.  It’s a quick little one, but not in the way “A-Punk” was, but in an annoying kind of way.  ”Giving Up The Gun” is an electronic piece for the most part, but it’s a good one as well, more like “I Stand Corrected” from the previous album.  It’s a little bit too long of a song, but one can see that they’re trying to overcome those short songs like “Cousins.”  At about :55, Koenig’s vocals really start to play their part, which is probably why the band has become popular.  It’s a different type of song, but there’s enough there to make for something exciting. “Diplomat’s Son” is a bit weird, considering it contains a sample and the lyrics essentially make no sense.  All and all, it’s good, even considering the shift about half way through, which feels like “Concrete and Clay” off of Bound Stems’ 2008 album The Family Afloat.

The real point of the album doesn’t come through until the end, however, with “I Think Ur A Contra.”  Vampire Weekend could have just released this song and I would for been happy, for it’s nothing like the band has ever recorded before, and it’s probably the next best thing by them apart from “Ottoman.”  It’s a quiet one, however it builds slowly and shows you that maybe these college rockers are a little bit more than just fun loving guys, which is really what their audience needed to see.  It probably won’t be a very popular song, however to me it gives hope of maybe a more fully realized album from these guys in the future.  As Koenig sings: “You want good schools/friends with pools/you’re not a Contra/You want rock ‘n roll/complete control/well I don’t know.”  It’s sad almost, as the violins play and the album comes to a close as one realizes that maybe life is a little bit more like this song than we all realized.

Overall, the album isn’t that self titled one, or what we expected.  But it’s something a little bit more.  It’s not a sophomore slump, but it’s not an amazing album.  It’s something completely different and exciting, which leads one to believe that maybe in the future, we can expect like the final track on the album than the first one.

this is one of the best reviews for this album that i’ve read so far.

kudos, boy. kudos to you.