Plumbiferous Media

Vam­pire Week­end, break­out band of 2008 fol­low­ing its immensely suc­cess­ful self-titled debut, is back once again with Con­tra. Both more com­plex and diverse than Vam­pire Week­end, which already incor­po­rated a sur­pris­ingly large range of influ­ences, Con­tra is cer­tainly some­thing new and exit­ing, though it boasts much of the same flaws as Vam­pire Weekend’s first album. And while the band has lost some of the raw energy that flowed through Vam­pire Week­end, it’s filled that hole to the brim with a glo­ri­ously con­flict­ing wealth of fresh ideas.

Vam­pire Weekend’s mem­bers’ hands cer­tainly haven’t grown lethar­gic in the near two years since their last debut, as tracks like “Cousins” will quickly prove. Indeed, tracks often rely on some quickly repeated note like on “Giv­ing Up the Gun,” or an oth­er­wise rapid line as a sort of hook. Unfor­tu­nately, the band still hasn’t quite mas­tered the slower tracks. “I Think UR a Con­tra,” as an exam­ple, just ends up drag­ging on for far too long, and “Taxi Cab” (which, while not slow per se, is quite relaxed) falls almost imme­di­ately into drag­ging, repet­i­tive platitude.

On the more sub­dued tracks of Con­tra, Ezra Koenig’s vocals are rec­og­niz­able from the debut’s “Cam­pus” and “Mansard Roof.” When Con­tra takes on the energy that courses through much of the album, how­ever, so does Koenig’s voice. Along with this, unfor­tu­nately, comes a siz­able appli­ca­tion of Auto-Tune, that modestly-irritating musi­cal inno­va­tion cur­rently endemic to pop­u­lar music. Thank­fully, Vam­pire Week­end has used it as well as it can be used (it’s more of an effect than a cor­rec­tive mea­sure), which is gen­er­ally for­giv­able, espe­cially given how well it is incor­po­rated into the frag­mented sound of “Cal­i­for­nia Eng­lish”. But Auto-Tune aside, Koenig’s voice is as clear and eager as ever, per­fectly suited as much to the rem­i­nis­cences of “Taxi Cab” as to the excite­ment of “Cousins.”

Con­tra has every bit of the wordy, vaguely elit­ist joy that made Vam­pire Weekend’s debut album fun. Ezra Koenig begins with the ani­mated “Hor­chata,” where he sings “You’d remem­ber drink­ing hor­chata / You’d still enjoy it with your foot on Masada” and “I’d look psy­chotic in a bal­a­clava.” From one point of view, it’s com­pletely non­sen­si­cal and inane - but it can equally be con­sid­ered cre­ative and play­ful. Koenig’s exu­ber­ant word­play does a great (and occa­sion­ally hilar­i­ous) job at draw­ing the col­or­ful sto­ries of Con­tra, whether he’s singing a wry trib­ute to Cal­i­for­nia in “Cal­i­for­nia Eng­lish” or the rem­i­nis­cent “Giv­ing Up the Gun.” Occa­sion­ally strange but always enter­tain­ing, the anec­dotes that run through Con­tra make it a great deal of the suc­cess that it is.

If Vam­pire Week­end was diverse, Con­tra is incred­i­bly diverse. Vam­pire Week­end has taken their indie-college-afro-latin-pop-rock sound and added Bollywood-esque frag­ments, elec­tron­ica, world music, and the kitchen sink. Leave it to Vam­pire Week­end to take all that and still not pro­duce an absolute mess of an album. Instead, each track care­fully manip­u­lates only as many gen­res as it can han­dle, and all the tracks are then tied together with Koenig’s voice act­ing as a sort of uni­fy­ing theme. The end result is an album that is nearly always engag­ing, quite weird, and simul­ta­ne­ously, immensely accessible.

It’s hard to shake the feel­ing that Con­tra is both a few steps for­ward and a few steps for­ward from Vam­pire Weekend’s debut nearly two years ago. It’s more vibrant over­all, but there are parts that sim­ply don’t ben­e­fit from Vam­pire Weekend’s increased eccen­tric­ity. Vocally, it’s Koenig at his best, but Auto-Tune prob­a­bly wasn’t all that nec­es­sary. Nev­er­the­less, Con­tra is, at its core, fun, and that’s what saves it from its occa­sional inad­e­qua­cies. As odd as it may occa­sion­ally seem, it’s hard to not to enjoy Con­tra for the sim­ple (and at the same time unavoid­ably com­plex) plea­sure it offers.

This post is tagged 80-89, Vampire Weekend