Album review: Vampire Weekend

Published on Sunday 3 January 2010 10:54

VAMPIRE WEEKEND Contra *** XL Recordings XLCD429, £11.99

Two years on from their phenomenally successful debut, the New York quartet cough up Contra, which sounds a little too pleased with itself, each song glorying in its quirk and cleverness.

White Sky takes the familiar influences of soca and jit, as smartly skewed by Paul Simon's wicked stepsons, and decorates them with whistles and bleeps hanging off cyclical percussion. Ezra Koenig's Mika-style yelping is infuriatingly catchy, but the song is irritatingly superficial.

Better is the pummelling street music of Cousins, a cosmopolitan skiffle jam that is hard to resist.

There is a throwback to NYC art rock's world music flirtations of the mid-Eighties, but unlike David Byrne, or indeed Talking Heads, there are inane grins where once there was a measure of gravitas. Why bother a smart name-check for the Latin American drink Horchada on the lead single from the album only to set up the line "I'd look psychotic in a balaclava"?

Shame really, as musically this is a fantastical cocktail party. In a predictable pop market Vampire Weekend remain a welcome relief from the obvious.

Download this: Cousins, White Sky