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Vampire Weekend Return

“In December, drinking Horchata/I’d look psychotic in a balaclava” … yep, Vampire Weekend is back.So opens VW’s sophomore effort, Contra, and school is definitely back in session. Luckily for their legions of Wikipedia-perusing fans, the band nimbly avoids a second album slump, and delivers the perfect beach music in the heart of this cold, cold winter.

Vampire Weekend's ContraBy now, every hipster worth his ironic t-shirt knows the story of Vampire Weekend: the four members of the band (Ezra Koenig, Chris Baio, Rostam Batmanglij, and Chris Tomson) formed in early 2006, while undergrads at Columbia University. They then began an almost mythically meteoric rise through the cool-kid press. They went from playing college parties and literary societies, to self-producing several well-received and much-buzzed and -blogged about EPs, to touring in the summer of 2007, to finally signing with XL records. They notoriously appeared on the cover of the March 2008 issue of SPIN magazine … all before they ever officially released their self-titled first album. And what an album it was – a vibrant mix of indie guitar rock melded with world-beat and Afro-pop –  an Ivy League Graceland. Their songs painted pictures of New England college quads, bonfires on Cape Cod beaches, and summers in Europe – essentially, a world none of can afford, but it all seems ever so dreamy.

It would be understandable if VW overplayed their hand on their second album, and turned what seemed new and fresh on their first one into something trite and overly precious on their second long-player. Instead, Vampire Weekend takes everything that worked on their first album, and expands it into new and exciting territory. The world beats are still here, as are the inscrutable lyrics (horchata is some sort of Latin American drink, and a balaclava is a type of ski mask/headgear … now you know). But like the well-heeled cultural appropriators that they are, they magpie bits and pieces from pop music (Auto-Tune on “California English;” twinkly electro-beats on “White Sky”) without ever sounding like poseurs. It speaks to the confidence (some would say complete naiveté) the band flexes on their second effort that they pull it off with such success.

In another neat trick, the boys bury some relatively heavy lyrics underneath the sunny sheen of their music. “Taxi Cab” ruefully looks back on a relationship gone bad, while the jaunty “Holiday” loosely alludes to the war in the Middle East. The album ends with an uncharacteristically quiet “I Think UR a Contra.” The goofy text-speak title belies their most clearly yearning lyrics – “You wanted good schools/And friends with pools … But I just wanted you.” Regardless of where we went to school, isn’t that what we all want?

Photo Credithttp://swipelife.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/vampire-weekend-contra11.jpg