Vampire Weekend

Contra

The first album released by Vampire Weekend in early 2008 was notable not just for its music, but for the conflict it created among indie fans who hold stringent anti-mainstream beliefs. The guilt-free, get-up-and-move, spring-and-summer pop was initially well received. But as the album found increasing commercial success, indie as a genre experienced a minor existential crisis. If divergence from a mainstream musical model gives indie its identity, could a band with mass appeal really fit in?

Anti-mainstream criticism piled onto Vampire Weekend, but one critical fact remained despite it all: their self-titled debut Vampire Weekend was a damn good album. Nonetheless, an aura of conflict seems to hover over Vampire Weekend; the title of their newest album, Contra, encapsulates the band’s odd position in the musical world.

The controversy seems to center on issues of authenticity: What right does a group of young New Englanders with multi-generational Ivy League pedigrees have to invoke Nicaraguan militants? For that matter, if the title is an reference to the Clash’s classic album Sandinista!, are we supposed to infer that Vampire Weekend is placing itself on the same level as those powerhouses of British punk? Or, worse still, is the album influenced by an ’80s action video game?

On a more literal level, the title can be seen as a self-conscious homage not to any specific entity, but to the conflicts that have become so deeply associated with Vampire Weekend. Contra is an invitation to consider upper middle class indie-popsters as South American rebel fighters, their music as iconic punk rock. Contra is also an invitation to examine how our perceptions of artists may spark conflict with our appreciation of their art. And so, with full gusto, Contra provides music that, regardless of its genesis, is simply good.

The album’s opening track, “Horchata,” opens Contra with a musical middle finger to those who have (rightfully?) accused the band of East Coast intellectual elitism. Over the course of the track, “horchata” is rhymed with “balaclava,” “Aranciata” with “Masada.” These unexpected lyrical pairings, which invoke a cerebral pomposity, are in turn paired with the song’s multi-metric Afro-Caribbean infused beat. While Contra’s lyrics may playfully flaunt the band’s higher education and an intimate knowledge of New England and Manhattan, Contra’s music proudly displays a diverse and worldly musical heritage, with hints of styles including ska, punk, afro, surfer rock, reggae, and classic rock.

The diversity of musical styles reflected within each song and throughout the album gives Contra a consistent freshness; each track is distinct from the next while nevertheless undeniably Vampire Weekend. The upbeat je ne sais quoi that pervaded Vampire Weekend abounds in this sophomore effort, but the musical style consciously shifts from track to track, even within songs. “Cousins” embodies this strange evolution of musical styles, toying with ska and punk beats, with an ending chorus of bells that, oddly, is almost Christmas-y.

In this manner, Contra is a bold musical effort, stepping outside the mold Vampire Weekend had formed for itself, But while the album’s adventurousness is much appreciated, the band may stray a bit too far at times.

Lyrically, Contra often borders on the absurd. Unexpected, unnecessary, and oddly appropriated references to semi-obscure topics are sprinkled throughout. (What, exactly, should we imagine a “Tokugawa smile” to be?) At times, pronounced syllabicity seems to suggest a preference for rhythm over meaning. However, the effort to focus on voice as an instrument is in no way reprehensible, the sharp enunciation and arresting word choices lending import to the lyrics. This emphasis may be just another facet of the controversy Contra courts.

Contra is a strong follow-up to Vampire Weekend’s eponymous debut. The music is a creative quilt of complexly layered influences that can be enjoyed over repeated listens. Some tracks, like the upbeat and punky “Cousins” and “Run,” will no doubt find significant time on the radio airwaves, and rear their heads on charts in the U.S. and abroad. That said, Contra is unlikely to have the same staying power and mass appeal of the band’s debut. Contra’s lyrical impenetrability and sometimes odd choice of musical styles will likely cut into the mainstream appeal that made Vampire Weekend so (in)famous.

Regardless of Contra’s success, the group will always hold a level of fame rare among indie artists. However, if expectations are somewhat deflated for Vampire Weekend’s likely third studio full-length, members of the band may use newfound breathing room to step back and use the complexities of Contra as a springboard to develop more musical maturity and define their direction for the years to come.

Spoon

Transference

Once, when I was 14, I was forced to sit in a car with my Slovenian grandmother, my over-caffeinated mother, and my jock-princess cousin for six hours in an Iowa county that has apparently never known the sweet, generation-spanning ambrosia of NPR. We did not kill each other, and this is how I know that there are bands that everyone—everyone—likes. Bands with lyrical sensibilities fresh enough to intrigue those who care and innocuous enough to be ignored by those who don’t; bands incapable of writing songs short on melody or longer than four minutes; in short, pop bands. Spoon was always, for me (and my female relatives) one of those bands—they’re A Christmas Story, they’re Pictionary, they’re the music your mom lets you play at parties.

The Austin band has been honing that fun-for-the-whole-family appeal for 17 years now. While their first album, Telephono, was a bland Pixies-wannabe record marred by lyrics like, “What would the powers-that-be do without you, Dad?” with their major-label debut, A Series of Sneaks, frontman Britt Daniel found his voice, half-cracked and desperate for attention but somehow bleedingly mature.

Their four albums since then have been uniformly good, and increasingly successful—the band’s last album, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, debuted at number 10 on the Billboard charts, a consistency that has made Spoon exceptional among today’s myriad one-and-done blogosphere nova bands. Hooky enough for the kids, thoughtful enough for the grown-ups, Spoon is a lifetime sport—the tennis of indie pop.

But that patented formula has been shaken up a bit on Transference. The band’s drumhead-tight sound has been cross-pollinated with what’s going on outside. Maybe Daniel has allowed the rise of hipster-annointed fuzzball chillwave to influence him, and the result is a little dusty, a little diluted, a little worse. It’s wine left outside in the rain.

The beauty of Daniel’s songwriting was always twofold: fantastic lyrics and creative arrangements. Both strengths suffer on Transference. Spoon’s lyrics were once one of the band’s great strengths; Daniel has a magical ability to cut his subjects (ennui; repressed anger; wrenching sadness) down into bitterly lovely details. He often focuses on small, unremarkable objects, making his best songs read like little Flaubert sketches: the adolescent fear of “atom bombs and blunt razors” from “Jonathan Fisk,” the intimate loneliness of the “new bag of pot” in “The Way We Get By.”

But the songs on Transference skew away from that kind of sharp-eyed observation and into teeth-grinding cliché: “Out Go the Lights” lists a litany of boring break-up epithets like “you were the one-two punch,” while the ominous synth lines of “Nobody Gets Me But You,” fail to elevate the song’s seventh-grade dream journal sentiment. One of the few good lines on the album, from “Written in Reverse,” seems, sadly, to describe the record’s own weaknesses: “It feels real good / Aw, but only briefly / Like high school poppers would / Where you lose a bit of yourself.”

More than a bit of Spoon’s trademark melodies seem lost here, too. Instead of the intricate horns of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga or the a capella influences on Kill the Moonlight, the production on Transference is stripped down to the bare essentials—at times the band sounds like they’re playing cheek-to-chin in a janitor’s closet. The songs dawdle and drag, especially “Written in Reverse,” the album’s anemic first single. With 40 seconds left, the song seems to end with a trailing piano figure before the band’s drummer, Jim Eno, busts back in with the song’s flat backbeat. It’s a testament to the song’s imperfections that his blowback is disappointing—you wanted it to be over. “Trouble Comes Running” starts strong with a ’Mats-era guitar solo and a triumphant “Hey!” only to dwindle into a one-line chorus so underwritten and over-repeated that you’re reaching for the skip button by 1:30. Most of the songs follow this unfortunate pattern, introducing a vaguely interesting figure, then chewing it over until what flavor it had is gone.

The album’s aimless, repetitive tunes are more than disappointing—to realize that even a melodiphile as committed as Daniel has been infected by all the furry synth-loops roaming the airwaves is to worry for the future of the short, loud, and pretty—and to reconsider any upcoming family vacations.