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Music Album Reviews Vampire Weekend - Contra
Vampire Weekend - Contra
Written by Hakim
Vampire Weekend - Contra
Released: January 12, 2010
Rating: 65/100
Relatively fresh band, 'Vampire Weekend' is an indie band from New-York, formed in 2006 around the lead singer and guitarist 'Ezra Koenig'. They released 2 albums, the self-titled first one in 2008, and the second one titled 'Contra' was released few days ago. Since the first album was well received, 'Contra' was long waited by the fans, and here it is now. In the cover of the album there is an old picture of a girl of the 80's looking strait right, she seems lost, or amazed. It actually does look nothing like the album on itself, I really found no reason why they could put that picture on the cover.
The album starts with the song 'Horchata', all the elements are there to make it sound like a happy song, Xylophone, violins, major chord, and the playful and childish voice of Ezra Koenig. It's been well chosen as an opening song, because it sets up the atmosphere very well for the next ones. 'White Sky', the second one, has a slight African and reggae touch in it, so are the songs 'California English' and 'Run'.
'Holiday', sounded just like a silly song to me, this one is really only for children, even adults who still think they are children won't like it. Apparently they are experimenting, not really making consistent music. But unfortunately the result is not very good.
'Vampire Weekend' tried to mix a lot of different styles at once: African, reggae, tribal, and sometimes also some old English punk rock. The thing is they didn't do it very well, with all these influences, the album just sounded a little screwed.
But there are also some good songs that are a little more serious than the others. The first being 'Taxi Cab', where you can hear some nice piano arpeggios, and then comes in the strings on the background, also the voice of 'Koenig' is more mature. Somehow it looked to me like a song by Jack Johnson, the same kind of soft rock, but involving piano instead of acoustic guitar. The second one is the ending song 'I think Ur a contra', just in the same context.
The rest of the songs, like 'Giving up the guns' and 'Diplomat's son', could have been made by a little boy whom you give a new keyboard toy to play with. They are that superficial. They are the kind of songs a profit seeking entity should avoid to release.
In this album 'Vampire Weekend' just sticks to the same construction of the last one, you can make your point about it right form the beginning, whether you will like their childish style and you will enjoy listening to them, or you will simply find them ridiculous and move on. It sounded just too sweet for me, they need to go slower on the happy stuff, to make some songs on minor key sometime, and vary the style from song to song, because it just sounded so monotone. Let's hope they will do a lot better next time, if there is any.
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