XL / Beggars / Select (label)
11 January 2010 (released)
11 January 2010
With their impressing eponymous first album released in 2008, we all thought Vampire Weekend would never be able to do any better: we were wrong.
The band, formed in 2006 in NYC with Ezra Koenig (lead vocals), guitar, Rostam Batmanglij (keyboards, guitar, backing vocals), Chris Tomson –(drums, percussion), Chris Baio (bass guitar, backing vocals), definitely has the secret to success, and has conquered the world in only four years time.
They are back with their new album 'Contra': an interesting mix between very intense African beats and Richie Valens, like in the song 'Cousins’ for example, classical music, Peter Gabriel or Paul Simon, and the band has accentuated its background vocals (just like in the first track of their album, 'Horchata’).
Added to these eclectic influences, the themes either through music or lyrics are probably a bit more melancholic than the ones evocated in the first album, which will probably end rumours saying 'Contra’ is a vulgar copy-pasted version of 'Vampire Weekend’: the band is growing up and musically evolving and this second album is just the proof of that.
The title of the album, 'Contra’, obviously means 'contradiction’ or 'conflict'. But what do they mean? What could they be in contradiction or conflict with? No one really cares because this album shows that being influenced by different genres isn’t being contradictory. This album gives us a great lesson on what being musically open-minded means. More than this, as usual, Vampire weekend knows how to turn our rainy days into fun, sunny moments of joy.
For all these reason, 'Contra’ is definitely a must-have this year, and especially because in times of recession, it is always good to gather as many little diamonds as you can, and it absolutely includes Vampire weekend’s new album.
