Drawing a parallel between Vampire Weekend and President Barack Obama may not be entirely apt, but it is at the very least intriguing. In the same way that Obama is considered one of the most popular politicians of the last 20 or 30 years after energizing the youth base and garnering comparisons to such legendary icons as Lincoln and Kennedy, Vampire Weekend have quickly become the "it" band for a certain segment of the twenty-something crowd. They each had strong support through word-of-mouth and online word of mouth.
"Contra" recently debuted at No. 1 on the billboard charts becoming one of a handful of independent releases to ever to do so. Yet, despite all this, their undeniable appeal, like Obama's, has been called into question as of late. A band's second album is its chance to solidify its reputation, but it can also be the album where some of the goodwill and support from its debut disappears.
Ezra Koenig stated that regardless of what people felt about "Contra," he wanted to be sure that it was a different record than the band's debut. The band half succeeded. Of the 10 tracks on "Contra," about half of them sound like they could have come from 2008's self- titled debut. "Holiday", with its breezy guitar figure and themes of summer leisure sounds very much like "Contra's" version of "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa".
"Cousins" is a bigger, brasher version of "A-Punk," with its tightly wound guitars and blitzing pace adding a harsher aspect to their music. These songs, though uniformly solid, don't change Vampire Weekend's established sound or offer many new ideas; an album full of them would indeed have been boring. Luckily, the other batch of songs adds in plenty of new ideas.
Sonically, "Contra" sounds more layered and murky than its predecessor. This is due in part to the fact that many of the songs on the album feature synth sounds and electronic elements as core instrumentation. Songs like "Taxi Cab" feature a mixture of strings, piano and an electronic looped beat, turning the band's typical chamber pop into something more complex. Although in "Taxi Cab" this mixture works, elsewhere it can get in the way.
One prominent feature of the band's sound that seems largely missing is Koenig's sunny guitar. "White Sky," apparently written very soon after the completion of the band's first album, features many of the band's new sounds and Koenig's guitar comes in only briefly in short chirps, sounding oddly restrained. In fact, of the 10 songs, only "Holiday" and "Cousins" really feature guitar front and center. This is an interesting move, considering that Koenig's clean tone shimmer is one of the more distinctive parts of the band's sound. The approach doesn't always work, but on "Run" which opens with a nifty guitar figure, only to subvert it when the band comes in, the results show a band with strong sense of balance.
"Contra" goes a long way towards fulfilling the promise of Vampire Weekend's debut, but it doesn't quite match that album's breezy pop. Whereas the debut had only strong songs, with the possible exception of "One (Blake's Got A New Face)," "Contra" features a couple of duds. "Giving Up The Gun" finds Vampire Weekend in uncomfortably teen-pop sounding territory and the auto-tune in "California English" is just one of many things that makes that song a cross between mildly pleasant and annoying. However, the album ends on a good note.
Between the swirling atmospherics, subtle strings, hand drum percussion and acoustic guitars, "I Think Ur A Contra" is much more ambitious than anything Vampire Weekend has ever done and other than the first 30 seconds of "I Stand Corrected," it's the only time the band has completely slowed the tempo. In large doses this would probably ruin the band's appeal, but at the end of a fast-paced and slightly unfocused album, it's refreshing.
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