Schadenfreude fiends won’t find much excitement here: Vampire Weekend’s sophomore album, Contra, isn’t the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! flame out that the buzz band’s detractors might have hoped for. It’s an amiable follow-up that recreates the spark of their debut often enough to please the faithful, though it probably won’t top many end of the year lists. Consider it the Room on Fire to Vampire Weekend’s Is This It.
Sonically, Vampire Weekend pushes forward, supplementing the African guitar jangle of their debut with cheap keyboard bloops and a grab bag of low-budget effects that throw back to their beloved ’80s. It's the band's songwriting that hits a roadblock. Their debut brilliantly capitalized on nostalgia for all things collegeboyish crushes, beatific walks around campus, academia for academia’s sakebut like so many recent graduates, singer Ezra Koenig is directionless now that he’s left the university. With little left to say, he fakes it, singing in vaguely pleasant images and chirpy non-sequiturs. He sees his "and Peter Gabriel, too," and raises himself Philly cheesesteaks, toothpaste, skinheads and horchata.
Vampire Weekend still do short pop songs well“White Sky” and “Holiday” fly by in an invigorating sugar rushbut too many tracks on Contra climb toward the five or six minute mark with nothing to show for it. The album is at its worst when Koenig tries to coast on his preciousness. More lolcat than human being, he mewls, coos and sighs his way through album closer “I Think Ur a Contra.” That song strives for a big, U2-styled payoff when the music drops out to emphasize Koenig's naked confession: “I just wanted you.” It’d be a potent clincher on a better albumthe touching, final reveal that gives context to the songs that proceeded itbut here it’s unearned. It's hard to go for the emotional kill when your songs don’t mean anything.
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Contra is temporarily streaming online between Creatine pop-up ads on Vampire Weekend’s MySpace page.
