The proliferation of essays on Vampire Weekend’s obscurely-titled, new album–Contra–should surprise no one. The independently released album, by XL Recordings, is now enjoying the top spot on the Billboard Album Chart.VW is the polemical double-debutante of the indie pop scene. It has an appeal like a fruity, sugary, jolly Tootsie pop – a glossy sheen of pop prowess, and a mysterious center. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Vampire Weekend album?
There are two ways to approach Contra: To achieve the elusive center, we can either deliver a swift and severe bite, like the peckish owl, or we can bestow lick-caresses, patiently and earnestly, while the musical dye stains our tongues.
Consideration between these two methods immerses us in an age old dialectic about musical analysis. Musicologists, academic and amateur, have long debated the merits and deficiencies of discussing just the music or, alternatively, the whole musical milieu.
Method one would be the brisk bite, and is sometimes referred to as positivist, structural, or scientific. It takes the recorded music to be a discreet artifact, and removes it from its social and cultural influences.
Method two would be the languid lick-job.This might be informed by sociology or cultural studies, and it would examine the history, cultural embeddedness, and mystique of the music and musicians. Both methods are useful, inevitable, and clearly complimentary. By combining the two, we balance the analysis and can dance around some of the common criticisms – that VW is preppy, elitist, lyrically remote, or that its combination of styles, including African soukous, represents a blithe cooptation of the authentic for commercial gain.
I restrain myself from going into too much detail here, because sophisticated and in-depth song-by-song analyses have been done elsewhere, such as this one in The New York Times. VW’s music is unapologetically poppy. By which I mean, it is mellifluous, lyrically accessible, relatively simple in structure, and chock full of memorable hooks and repetitive choruses.
While the adjectives “poppy” or “mainstream” can sometimes seem derogatory–and may be valid as such – Saul Williams expresses my opinion on the subject best: “That’s only a criticism if you’re a loyalist to the underground as opposed to a loyalist to good shit.”
Is Contra good shit? From the positivist perspective, the album is a collection of songs which are relatively simple, structurally, but that does not make it uncreative. To the contrary, the gentlemen of VW–led by singer Ezra Koenig–keep the rhythm and speed of the songs varied throughout, and the ebb and flow guarantee a strong level of titillation.
Contra’s instrumentation is lush and heterogeneous, representing the cherry-picked best of American, African, and English styles. Koenig’s vocals range from the strident to the spectral. VW also pumps up the post-production, relative to their self-titled debut. Those methods are particularly effective in opening space in their laconic songs for innovation and novelty.
For instance, the distorting, Auto-Tune effect on Koenig’s voice in “California English” is a refreshing embellishment to the brisk, purportedly Afro-pop sensibility. Also, check out the yelping skat on “Cousins,”–their first single and, ironically, one of my least favorite songs on the album – the strings and–what the hell is that?–harpsichord on “Taxi Cab,” the horns on the straight-forward pop-tune “Run,” and the African drum–djembe, I think–on the ballad, “I Think Ur A Contra.” Then “Diplomat’s Son” is musically kaleidoscopic, and the most characteristic song as an appropriate analogy for the diversity of the album as a whole.
As we lick towards the full picture on VW’s Contra, it must be conceded that the underlying diversity of the album can be a double edge sword. It implies that, for every listener, there are to be some songs which grate or bore. “Holiday,” for instance, strikes me as sub-par in its redundancy, melody, and instrumentation. It tries for a British pop-punk sensibility, but falls flat. “Holiday,” along with “Cousins,” are the two most simplistic, poptastic, and repetitive songs on the album.VW balances on a tightrope of accessible and intriguing and can easily lose its sophistication and end up sounding sophomoric. Or, importantly, this is just the part of the album that appeals least to my sensibility. Chances are that some listeners prefer these songs and dis-prefer those I find most fresh and electrifying.
Lyrically, Contra is somewhat obscure, which can also be seen as arrogant or remote by some listeners. It is erudite on pop culture and redolent of international travel and American upper-middle-classism. One can be turned off by this, but I take it to be an opportunity for education and rich interpretation. “California English,” for instance, is packed with references: to “Hapa Club” (Hapa refers to a person of mixed Asian or Pacific Islander ethnic heritage), “carob cake” (from a tree found only in the Mediterranean) as well as a high-flying geographic panoply, not to mention Tom’s Organic Toothpaste.
VW’s music is representative of the eclecticism of the contemporary age, what with globalization and the rise of youth-inspired cosmopolitanism. The gentlemen of VW are unbounded, like the wealthy youth of the western world (and, more and more, the youth of the world): internationally minded, cultural cherry-pickers, innovative about mixing and melding.
They channel the feeling of internationalized manifest destiny which is unique to today’s millenial generation. That they are somehow elitist and prepified is undeniable: they represent a cultural trend which is rooted in wealth and the inequality of international globalization. However, to criticize them for those external cultural aspects is to create an ad hominem, which has no bearing on the discreet artifact that is their recorded music.Those that emphasize the relevance of this fact, more often than not belong to and benefit from the same generational and cultural mold.
The fact that VW’s music is called “Upper West Side Soweto,” and derives influence from Congolese soukous is an object of interest, but more importantly, integral to the band’s commercial success. We do not care all that much what soukous is or what elements of it are in VW’s music. If we have dire fears of cultural imperialism, the hegemony of commercial capitalism, or the cooptation of the “authentic” for the sake of the “artificial,” they are not reflected in patterns of musical consumption. We just like the music and adore the international flair, the sheen of mystery. Unlike the contra-revolutionaries of late 20th century Nicaragua, we are contra-nothing except bad taste and mediocre music.
Vampire Weekend has done a particularly good job of exploiting our (some combination of American; international; youth; upper-; middle-; class) omnivorous multiculturalism, growing apathy and agnosticism towards origin and authenticity, and our inherent privilege and prepiness, even in those who do not dress like Oxford dons.
-Note: Reprint from when I was editor and contributor at WERW 1570's student radio and music blog at Syracuse University. Contra was released January 12, 2010. My show was called Brad and The Unbounded One.
