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Contra [Vinyl] by Vampire Weekend.

or Rating: Vampire Weekend delivered one of the breakout albums of 2008 with their self-
titled debut.

The young New York 4-piece took the indie world by storm with their incredible
blend of Western pop & popular African music, like some kind of Paul Simon
re-imagined for the 21st century.

Now, the group prepare use for the release of their highly anticipated follow up,
Contra.

Also released on famed XL Recordings, the band claim they sound ?more like
Vampire Weekend? on Contra.

Contra is bustling with fresh ideas & yet immediately familiar; it?s heavily
layered but taut; chews ravenously through sound palettes & rhythms, yet is
nimble & assured; & smouldering with a newfound emotional heft.

Contra explodes any reductive notions of what constitutes Vampire Weekend?s
sound & aesthetic.

The varied influences here include third-wave ska, the Hallelujah Chicken
Run Band, Brazilian baile funk, Congolese thumb pianos, Repo Man, Sublime?s
40 Oz. To Freedom, reggaeton, bachata, Bollywood, Philip Roth, Beethoven,
NYC 1983, dancehall & the Beastie Boys? 2nd LP, Paul?s Boutique.

All of these influences are incorporated with subtlety & sophistication, woven
together into a seamless fabric of references that, heard in full, resembles
nothing so much as itself.

With the release of Contra, an album set to explode into the mainstream, Vampire
Weekend have staked out an alien territory ? literate, crackling, alive ? that?s
unmistakably their own.

Tracks:
1. Horchata
2. White Sky
3. Holiday
4. California English
5. Taxi Cab
6. Run
7. Cousins
8. Giving Up The Gun
9. Diplomat?s Son
10. I Think Ur A
11. Contra Performer Notes: The scholarly Upper West Side Soweto of Vampire Weekend's debut sounded self-assured, but on Contra, they step out of their ivory tower with just as much confidence. In all senses of the term, this is a sophomore album. The band still flaunts the collegiate sense of discovery that made Vampire Weekend charming -- and sometimes too precious -- but with more maturity and creativity. Another Discovery is just as much of a force on Contra as any of the band's much-noted influences (Afro-pop, Paul Simon's Graceland): Rostam Batmanglij's electro-hip-hop-pop project with Ra Ra Riot's Wes Miles, which released its album LP after the pair found acclaim with their day jobs. While Vampire Weekend aren't as shiny and sugary as Discovery, some of that adventurousness rubbed off on Batmanglij's Contra production, which plays to the band's biggest strength: inspired juxtaposition. The album's artwork, which pairs a blonde WASP princess in a popped-collar polo shirt with the term given to Nicaraguan rebels, hints at the flair with which Vampire Weekend play mix-and-match on Contra. They throw listeners into the deep end with "Horchata," which features a four-on-the-floor beat, thumb piano, rubbery synth bass, and massed harmonies -- almost everything except the spry guitars that helped define their first album. "California English" goes farther, tweaking Ezra Koenig's yelp with Auto-Tune, the bˆte noire of those who value "realness" in their music; for Vampire Weekend, it's just another instrument for them to play with. On paper, Contra's hybrids seem more contrived than they actually sound: "Giving Up the Gun" fuses baile funk, house and stadium rock into a sweet melody propelled by choppy rhythms. "Diplomat's Son" is even more far-fetched and fantastic, adding samples of M.I.A. and Toots & the Maytals -- exactly the kind of things you'd expect to hear on a young globetrotter's iPod -- to nostalgic chamber pop. The album bustles with so many sounds and ideas that it challenges listeners to decide where to put their ears first, particularly on the single "Cousins," a blur of guitars and jump-cut drums that sounds like abstract punk. Despite this busyness, Vampire Weekend are looser and less cryptic than on their debut, allowing them to tell stories like "Holiday," an Iraqi war protest set to skanking guitars (ever the font snob, Koenig can't resist mentioning a headline in "96-point Futura"). Even the few quiet moments are complex: "I Think UR a Contra" closes the album by wanting, and hating, the kind of privilege that brings "good schools and friends with pools." And though the band is committed to change, the same joy that soared through Vampire Weekend pops up on "White Sky," which boasts a melody so irrepressible that Paul Simon just might want to borrow it. With Contra, Vampire Weekend make Auto-Tune and real live guitars, Mexican drinks, Jamaican riffs and Upper West Side strings belong together, and this exciting lack of boundaries offers more possibilities than anyone could have expected. ~ Heather Phares Professional Reviews: Rolling Stone (p.56) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[B]rainy, confident and generally awesome....The drums are bigger, the guitars are faster, and the songs are outfitted with synth beats and hip-hop, reggae and electro accents."

Spin (p.61) - "CONTRA is more fully formed, a '70s-style record-type record. It's their version of the Talking Heads' MORE SONGS ABOUT BUILDINGS AND FOOD..."

CMJ - "[I]t retains all of the band's sunny key elements: clean electric guitars, buoyant keyboards and poppy African rhythms..."

Paste (magazine) (p.61) - "CONTRA opener 'Horchata' displays a caliber of pop songcraft and melodic intuition that gives The Shins' James Mercer a run for his harmony..."

Uncut (magazine) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[W]ith its melodic beauty, orchestral invention, rhythmic subtlety and metaphysical wit -- it's still unmistakably Vampire Weekend."

Uncut (magazine) (p.36) - Ranked #13 in Uncut's "The 50 Best Albums of 2010" -- "[C]lever and catchy songs loaded with Clash allusions." Format: Vinyl (1 Disc) Country: USA Release Date: 11 January, 2010 Label: Rhythmethod

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