Vampire Weekend have so many surprises under their sleeve. In early 2008, they stunned the world with a delectable and perfect debut record filled with Paul Simon loving Afro pop, with the delightful string section here and there. Last year, we sampled a few songs from their much anticipated sophomore release, and everything looked right on par. The new songs were sharp and innovative, and the whole world let in a big breath of relief. Well, Contra is here, so prepare to be wowed by Vampire Weekend once more.
So many bands fail to live up to the expectations following a successful debut album, mostly because of time restraints. They have all of the time in the world before releasing a debut, but only about a year to come up with a second one, and that usually overlaps with the oft exhausting debut tour. But, listening to Ezra’s smooth vocals and the band’s seamless backing instrumentals, it’s hard to believe that they were under any stress at all. Take “Holiday”, for example. It builds their signature clever lyrics over fuzzy percussion and douses them with the fun loving guitars we got addicted to in “A-Punk”.
The best thing about Contra is that it is audibly a post Discovery record. The delicate percussion and almost defiantly lullaby-esque tones on the album flirt with disaster, but come up safely at the other end. You can hear Rostam’s innovative songwriting contributions which derive from his collaboration with a mostly string based band (Ra Ra Riot). On Contra, it’s more subtle and palatable than on LP by Discovery.
Contra is a whisper, a dream, a meadow of bubbles. Its ten songs are soft and warm and full and will satisfy you on every level imaginable. It is the perfect aural manifestation on the lyrics found on "Diplomat's Son": "I could sleep whereever I lay my head...last night I smoked a joint with my best friend, when I woke up, he was gone". It is a slightly confused, but thoroughly enjoyably mellow record.
It has the occasional jolt of energy (“Cousins”), but mostly stands as an ode to the middle ground between shoe gaze and indie pop. And once again (just like with their debut), if you hate this album, you're just lying to yourself.
It’s an extremely well made record, and has earned a huge stamp of approval from me. Especially "Giving Up the Gun". hot damn that song is good.
4/5
Contra officially drops tomorrow in the UK and Tuesday in the States, so make sure you pick it up!
3 comments:
WEB SHERIFF
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Hi Hanan,
On behalf of XL Recordings and Vampire Weekend, we would kindly ask you not to post copies of "Contra" on your site (or any non-preview tracks from Vampire Weekend's new album - street date 11th Jan UK & 12th Jan US).
We do appreciate that you are fans of / are promoting Vampire Weekend, but the label and artist would greatly appreciate your co-operation in removing your links to the pirate files in question.
Thank you for respecting the artist's and label’s wishes and, if you / your readers want good quality, non-pirated, preview tracks, then full length versions of "Horchata" and "White Sky" are available for fans and bloggers to link to / post / host etc at www.vampireweekend.com . Additionally, all three tracks from the Vampire Weekend Meets Toy Selectah bonus CD "Contra Megamelt" ("Cousinz", "Contramelt A" and "Contramelt B") have now also been designated as fan previews for sharing ahead of release … .. for further details of the new album, on-line promotions, videos and 2010 shows, check-out the official site, as well as the band’s Myspace at www.myspace.com/vampireweekend and XL’s YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/user/XLRecordings ... .. and keep an eye on these official sources for details of further news, preview material and on-line promotions.
As a special, New Year’s gesture to fans and bloggers, an exclusive preview stream of the full album is now also available at the band’s MySpace page ... .. this is for hyper-linking ONLY and for streaming by fans directly off the band’s MySpace , so please reciprocate this goodwill gesture by NOT ripping or embedding these files ... .. similarly, a streaming widget is now also available off the band’s web-site for fans and bloggers to embed / enjoy pre-release but – again – please only use the official widget and don’t offer or embed ripped / pirated files.
Thanks Again & Best for 2010,
WEB SHERIFF
WEB SHERIFF..
SUCK MY GINGER WILLY.
Webs Sheriff is a dick!
Anyway, I just snagged this off Amazon the other day, and looking forward to it coming in the mail. I listened to a few tracks from it, and found it WAY more tolerable than their first LP--which I didn't care for at all.
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