In-Contra-Vertible

The number one album in the country right now might be a rarity because it was independently released, but pop sensibilities hold a firm grasp on the top spot. Vampire Weekend’s Contra is just the twelfth indie album to reach this pinnacle, allowing them to join an exclusive group alongside headline-making artists like N.W.A. and Radiohead. So what’s the band doing right to push their sales out of mid-level clubs and into the record books?

As it turns out, an awful lot. On their eponymous debut album, Vampire Weekend crafted what sounds on repeated listens to be an easily enjoyable collection of indie-pop gold. Plague-level catchy singles like “Oxford Comma” and “A-Punk” helped the album peak at number 17 on the US Billboard chart. This is not to say the band is without detractors, however. Critics have taken issue with Vampire Weekend’s privileged upbringing, clean-cut appearance, Ivy League origins, and shameless co-opting of African and Calypso percussion and rhythms to market white music.

After some time with Contra, I can pretty safely say that Vampire Weekend gives absolutely no fucks about what critics have to say about them. Their second full-length pretty obviously takes the band’s favorite things about their own music and experimentally expands on them to a self-indulgent breaking point. The necessary core is still there, with Ezra Koenig’s chameleon-like falsetto at the front and keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij’s constantly entertaining flourishes of strings and synthesizers filling out their sound. Rostam produced the record, and it shows, with a myriad of extended instrumental solos and much heavier reliance on MIDI-sounding synth pops pervading a lot of the songs. It’s immediately apparent on this record how much denser and more layered the tracks sound, but that isn’t always a good thing.

The record begins on a high note with “Horchata,” which provides a wonderful arrangement of soaring vocals, marimba, and driving percussion that blends just enough of the old and new to make one incredibly optimistic about the record. Although Koenig’s lyrics might make some of the more self-aware listeners groan at his hyper-literate word choices, it can’t detract too much from what is really a great song. “Holiday” is an injection of pure pop/rock goodness, and perhaps the most straightforward song on the record, as it could easily have been found on Vampire Weekend, and it’s hard to frown at a song about warm tropical vacations.

Things begin to get very weird immediately after that. “California English” begins with a manic, auto-tuned vocal expulsion that borders on annoying, and the polyrhythmic string plucking underneath it doesn’t help. The background vocals are lovely and choral, and things come together into a much tighter package toward the end of the track, but one can’t get over the jarring introduction before the song ends. The first single, “Cousins,” sounds like one of the band’s first singles turned on its head, with frantic and somewhat dissonant tremolo picking and a churning bass riff, but Koenig’s overwhelming vocal charm really helps the song stand out.

The album’s last three tracks mark the biggest departure from their first record. “Giving Up the Gun” sounds like a techno remix of an old Vampire Weekend song, with fuzzy, electronic sounds that would probably be more at home on a Dan Deacon record. “Diplomat’s Son” begins with an M.I.A. sample and a synth line that sounds like a reggae song on the soundtrack to a Super Nintendo game. Album ender “I Think UR A Contra” begins ambient and atmospheric, with heavy jazz piano and accenting guitar notes as Koenig basically sings a lullaby. Anywhere else on the record this track would be a pace-killing mistake, but it ends up as a beautiful outro.

Contra is marginally less catchy and much weirder than Vampire Weekend’s debut. The effortless and sometimes minimalist gems from the self-titled have been replaced by incredibly complex instrumental arrangements, and the laid-back charm has a much more laborious feel this time around. With heavy experimentation come some mistakes, but it’s very difficult to get mad at a band for doing some things wrong when they do so many more things right. As Koenig sings on the closer, “You wanted rock’n’roll, complete control, well I don’t know.” Vampire Weekend had complete control over this album and gave us exactly what they wanted, a collection of impressive, experimental indie pop that defies comprehensive description.