Rock and Roll; Complete Control — Vampire Weekend’s Contra in review
It’s no small feat following up an album as critically acclaimed and overwhelmingly backlashed as Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut. Even in a vaccuum, expectations for sophomore efforts run rampant, and the challenge is to stay consistent to the sound present or impression given by the first album while growing and making something decidedly new and different.
In many ways, Vampire Weekend is the truest blogosphere buzz band. Back in the summer of 2007, when a blue CD-R with “Vampire Weekend” scrawled lazily on it began to make the blog rounds, it was almost universally accepted that this was the ever-elusive “next big thing.” Long before Vampire Weekend ever came out, bloggers were predicting it would be the best album of 2008. Naturally, the backlash coming the requisite 90 days after the album’s release was as overwhelmingly negative as the prereviews had been positive. And, when news of the followup broke, you could already hear the whispers of “overrated” creeping up from the formerly faithful fans.
The beauty of Vampire Weekend was that it grabbed you from the first line of the first song. It was undeniably catchy, a delicious assortment of pop-punk, afropop, and twee, and the erudite upper middle-class prep school bunch had never seemed so cool. The band had a persona too — they’d marketed themselves about as well as any quartet this side of the mophead Beatles, with their preppy do’s and keffiyeh lyrics. Contra spins out of that perfectly, popping the collars of their Lacoste polos and heading west into the sun.
I admit that I was very skeptical when I heard about the “California flavor” of Contra. It seemed like a cheap trick, an unnecessary additional buzzword to add to an already overblurbed band (see above for examples). But it turns out that the theme is only there as much as you want it to be — perhaps the better way to understand it is that Contra on the whole is more spread-out, experimental, and atmospheric than Vampire Weekend was. VW’s great strength was its power melodies; here, production reigns supreme. Rostam is the lead every bit as much as Ezra, having spread his wings on Discovery’s LP. The resulting product is more varied and mature than the debut — a gift as well as a curse.
The hardest part of Contra for me was the fact that it doesn’t have the same instant gratification that Vampire Weekend did. The first time I listened to it all the way through I wasn’t even sure if I liked it. But on listen two it began to click, and by the fourth time I spun it I was ready to put it on repeat. Ultimately, the growth the band has experienced in the whirlwind 24 months between releases has brought us a richer, more textural sound, a little less catchy and a little more beautiful. It’s a sound that’s decidedly Vampire Weekend, but a more refined and unique Vampire Weekend.
Giving Up The Gun – Vampire Weekend (YSI)
I love it. The growth from the first album is subtle but noticeable…Definitely what I wanted, with some pleasant surprise, out of the album.