Soundbite: Vampire Weekend
By Natalie Edwards
Feb. 4, 2008 9:01 p.m.
To think: Vampire Weekend’s first album only came out Jan. 29, after something like six months of riding the biggest waves of the hype machine based on only a handful of songs. Many seemed to lament the January release of Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut because it disqualified the band from inclusion in best-of-2007 year-end lists. But now that Vampire Weekend can be judged through the lens of 11 official songs and not float on the promise of being the Columbia-graduate wunderkinder with a penchant for new wave Afropop, it has become clear that those lists were better off without the band.
The New York Times is partly to blame for the runaway press. So excited to finally be an indie music tastemaker, the newspaper went so far as to feature Vampire Weekend in their Style section. The band is apparently newsworthy enough for a reporter to accompany them shopping.
Still, no harm has been done. The band members are certainly stylish, but of far more importance, “Vampire Weekend” is a breath of fresh air. The songs are upbeat and happy. The most tortured lyric on the album may very well be on song “Campus,” in which the singer laments a “cruel professor” and needing to drag himself across campus to class. The men of the band, who also appear to be globe-trotters judging by the number of mentions of faraway cities, seem to lead unapologetically charmed lives.
Collegiate or preppy, most notably in the case of song titles “Campus” and “Oxford Comma,” are apt monikers to describe the lyrical content and the clean constructions of the songs. There is an easy atmosphere to the tracks that seems indelibly tied to the band’s pedigree. Call it paradise-resort indie.
Track title “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” hints at the influence of African musical stylings found throughout. The band depicts its own sound as “Upper West Side Soweto,” and indeed the album does feel like a breezy safari through New York City on, for example, the first song “Mansard Roof,” with the lead singer musing on the city’s architecture to a keyboard that mimics a Caribbean steel drum. The actual drum rhythm gives the song a galloping pace and a string section during the chorus adds an iota of playful baroque weight.
“Oxford Comma” settles quickly into a metronome-like groove with clinky drum-rim hitting and the singer’s slender falsetto. The song has a sweet jangly guitar riff and simple but effectively atmospheric keyboard swooshes.
“A-Punk,” another album highlight, sounds like seaside ska with a fluttering guitar melody and a danceable beat. “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” is Caribbean easy listening, so self-satisfied that the song build-up adds little aside from an overlap of the same confectionery melody. A mid-song break highlights pleasant hand-drumming and happy nonverbal vocalizations.
There are weaker songs ““ like “M79,” which suffers from a hackneyed chorus and abrupt key changes ““ and a couple of forgettable songs, but overall, the wait was well worth it.
In the future, though, let’s leave the Style section alone.
– Natalie Edwards
E-mail Edwards at [email protected].
