How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
Vampire Weekend
"Contra"
4.5 stars
Vampire Weekend gets lots of flack for being too rich, too weird and perhaps too simple. (The electrifying guitar intro to 2008's "A-Punk" featured two chords.) But their sophomore album "Contra" demonstrates they've changed and embellished their previous approach in all the ways that count.
Lead single "Horchata" was an important choice for the first single, boldly putting their fearless Upper West Side Afropop strut on display. Supported by an echo, Ezra Koenig's trademark crooning becomes a rolling wave of voices, as if the song were sung by a chapel with a full congregation. Eventually fleshed out by glittering strings, the track features a bellowing synth and Kalimba thumb piano that pops with childlike innocence. Though the song is about loss and regret, the music itself celebrates newly integrated instrumentation and the band's freshly California-branded image.
The mass of voices in the refrain of "Horchata" is a manifestation of what guitarist/keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij claims is the band's attempt to make the voice into an instrument. They further explore that idea in "California English," a song which uses T-Pain-approved auto-tuning. Fear not, Koenig offers to buy you neither a drank nor a shot of horchata; the lyrics contemplate the corruptibility of status symbols and commercialism.
"Giving Up the Gun" is the album's most ambitious song and also its best. The track brings many different styles into harmony, including house and stadium rock with a funky edge. Synth claps, driving congas, and tingling bells surround Koenig's vocals, which span the length of the song, save for one guitar solo at the bridge. At first, his voice is straining to be heard, deeply smothered by a blaring synth. Yet with its quivering repetition, the melody overthrows the keyboard, becoming distinctive enough to deliver a statement of the band's new direction: a taming blend of electronics and culturally referential sounds. And here, as on the majority of the album, it's brilliant.
