Vampire Weekend, Contra

Googling “Vampire Weekend cultural appropriation” yields so many essay length results that it’s difficult to even discuss the bands music without at least a perfunctory nod to the gossipy, contentious contexts that shadow them. On Contra, the band dive headlong into this surrounding discordance, translating it into inspiration and gleefully accepting every tag projected onto them; taught minimalists, mainstream poppers, musical tourists, droll hipster preps—Vampire Weekend deftly handle all these modes on their new album, sometimes in the course of one song. High on pure sonic possibility, the album’s ten tracks effortlessly dart through genres without regard for continental barriers. Current Top 40 sounds that would have betrayed the purity Vampire Weekend strived for have been spliced into the mix. The sparkling, up-to-the-minute contemporaneousness of keyboardist/producer Rostam Batmanglij, who moonlit in hip hop inspired duo Discovery, actually drives more of Contra’s songs then the pristine guitars of the debut.

The architecturally obsessed “White Sky” is Vampire Weekend at their least organic and most innocent, the song’s lyrics about youths in city brilliantly matched by the bright, blockily electronic textures that approximate fast-motion skyscraper construction. The amount of space incorporated into the arrangement and the Richard Serra reference probably weren’t coincidental, and the song’s city-was-made-for-us vibe will rub the band’s detractors the wrong way. That is, if they made it past the couplet of album-opener “Horchata” in which the titular drink is rhymed with “balaclava” over a miniature symphony of marimbas. Contra’s first two tracks are testament to Vampire Weekend’s absorbent powers, though; their radars are as open to the criticisms flung at them by backlashing bloggers as they are to multicultural collaging.

Self-conscious by nature, Contra finds Vampire Weekend fully aware that they toe a unique precipice between indie heroicism and mainstream success, and utterly fascinated by the sounds emanating from both camps. If they are exploiting anything, it’s the very ground they stand on. On Contra, they demonstrate a pan-global, genre-hopping sonic curiosity; consider it equal-opportunity rock if you’re genuinely concerned with cultural usurpation accusations. The members of Vampire Weekend have giddily immersed themselves in the layers of tension surrounding them, though too many critics will reduce Contra’s thematic and creative concerns to juxtaposition.

Contradiction is only part of the larger narrative of wonderment and receptivity. True, the ironic distance between the often tongue-cemented-in-cheek lyrics and the chiming, West Africa informed clarity that made the debut such an interesting listen is a continuing thread in the sophomore effort. “Taxi Cab,” which finds Koenig singing from perspective of a jaded, sighing aristocrat over the band’s pebbliest keyboards, begins in this vein. Quickly enough, though, things become more complicated than a simple balance of opposites. Pulsing strings enter, providing the narration with a sympathetic platform that is augmented by an elegant bridge. The harpsichord-sounding solo might have seemed like a jab at the song’s protagonist if it had the tiny, faux-sophisticated tinkle of the Rushmore soundtrack reminiscent “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa;” instead, recalling George Martin’s sped-up piano in The Beatles’ classic “In My Life,” it supplies gravity to the bemused resignation of the words. “You’re not a victim/But neither am I/We’re nostalgic for garbage/Desperate for time,” Koenig muses, as if he’s just learned that having everyone’s number also includes having his own.

Of this set of songs, the cheery reggae pop of “Holiday” is most reminiscent of Vampire Weekend, though the guitars have an ever so slightly gnarled, surfy edge that would have felt out of place on the band’s debut. The sinewy, Afro Pop inflected guitars and sparse verses of “California English,” when coupled with Koenig’s lyrics concerning the eccentricities of anglophile linguistics, might have harkened back to their first record were the singing not aided by auto-tune and the strings not in Kanye West-triumphant mode. Elsewhere, “Run” surprises with Mariachi horns, shares a title with one New Order single, and flits along on synths that seem quote from another, “Bizarre Love Triangle.” Forget calculated accoutrement—the songs themselves seem to have grown from a gleeful entanglement of such disparate sounds. Nowhere is this more apparent then the sparkling “Diplomat’s Son,” which weaves samples from M.I.A. and Toots and the Maytals, chirping female vocals recalling Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, and swaying harmonies into the vibrant highlight of Contra. Koenig, at his loosest and funniest, buoyantly skips along on the “Pressure Drop” sample for an improbable six minutes and swaps “Peter Gabriel, too” for “I’m gonna take it from Simon/Then I’m gonna duck out behind them.”

Nearly as arresting are the dizzying, cartoonish thrills of “Cousins.” The song’s impossible tempo kicks up more sand than anything else in the band’s brief discography, its mazelike guitars saved from a destructive pace by the last minute addition of a chorus of bells slow things to a safe landing speed. Here, as in “Diplomat’s Son,” the music exudes a wide-eyed willingness to explore and experiment, which is at the effervescent heart of the kaleidoscopically restless Contra.