Sophomore albums are always pivotal. You put out a bad 2nd offering and a slippy slope waits, with the cess pit at the bottom filled with acts like The Strokes and The Hives; bands that could have been contenders.
So it is that Vampire Weekend grimace with hope and pray that they avoid the slag heap of promising acts that never breached the cocooned success of their 1st offering.
Contra does not disappoint. It does however, polarize. For those who view Vampire Weekend with disdain, so too shall you dislike this album. It is completely unapologetic with its opener. ‘Horchata’ not only sounds identical to their 1st LP, it walks hand in hand with it, playfully giving the two fingered salute to the non-subscribers.
In fact it would be apt to label the two albums as siblings, with Contra simply wishing to unabashedly emulate its elder. Only, as is often the case, the younger sprog is more adventurous, learning from their kinfolk’s mistakes.
Gone are the nicey nicey guitars on songs like ‘Boston’, having been replaced with more experimental numbers such as the M.I.A. sampled ‘Diplomat’s Son’.
Rostam Batmanglij’s keyboards on ‘White Sky’ are sublimely accompanied by differing, intertwining percussion from Chris Tomson. With his vocals, Ezra Koenig is seen to be embracing a cosy little penchant for Kate Bush.
‘Cousins’ doesn’t mince its nature as it announces itself as the LP’s attempts at recapturing the rip-roaring success of ‘A-Punk’.
Whilst there is nothing necessarily wrong with the song, it’s not really a shade on its predecessor. ‘A-Punk’ was such a behemoth of a club tune that the band may struggle to ever to better a song that, in its own intentions, was near perfection.
That being said, Tomson’s drums piss all over this song and are brilliant.
Koenig’s vocals on ‘Giving Up The Gun’ are softer than on the rest of the album, as he chimes “Your swords grown old and rusty/Burnt beneath the rising sun/It’s locked up like a trophy/Forgetting all the things it’s done.”
Ezra’s lyrics are greatly matured on Contra, with layered references to “Tokugawa smiles” demonstrating it’s not just Batmanglij and the rest of Vampire Weekend that are looking to mature.
The album closes on the delicate ‘I Think UR A Contra’, with Koenig lamenting “Never pick sides/Never choose between the two/But I just wanted you”.
Contra is an incredibly endearing album that serves to show Vampire Weekend as a band with depth and desire. In hindsight, their new found triteness fits them well.
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