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Album Review

Vampire Weekend
Vampire Weekend XL Recordings

Article written by Ged M - Feb 4, 2008

Hear - or even better, see - Vampire Weekend and you’re blown away by their fearlessness in integrating their influences and the energy with which they play. Sure, as everyone keeps banging on, their music has various African rhythms as you hear clearly in the township jive of ‘Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa’. But listen on and there’s a strong echo of The Beat in the frenetic, skittery way they play ‘A-Punk’ while ‘Bryn’ has some of the reggae-isms of the Police. It isn’t some form of cultural appropriation, a charge that was levelled at Paul Simon in the 80s, which they have the good sense to laugh at (they call their music “Upper West Side Soweto”). Instead, born in the ‘80s, they’ve grown up with world music, and into a world of music, so it’s no surprise that they have such a wide palette of sounds to hand.

Their world is also an academic New York one so critics’ obsession with their preppy background is also tiresome. They sing about things they know about, like Manhattan bus routes (‘M79’) student life (‘Campus’) or upper class resorts like Hyannisport. But they do it with style and wit, throwing together, in ‘Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa’, an extended rhyme of “Louis Vuitton…reggaeton…Benetton” and acknowledging their world music sound (“it feels so unnatural/ Peter Gabriel too”).

The album has some great string arrangements and employs instruments like harpsichord and chamberlin but it’s best when they just let the energy flow through the frenetic college pop of ‘Walcott’ or the architecture-inspired ‘Mansard Roof’. As with all their songs, you never feel shortchanged by their lyrics. The only duffer is ‘One (Blake’s Got A New Face)’, which falls quite flat here though it’s more tolerable live.

Vampire Weekend’s perky pop is a real tonic. I’m not sure where they’ll go next (the road to world music hell is paved with Sting intentions) but the feisty jump cuts of the debut album are more than enough for now.

Links:
http://www.myspace.com/vampireweekend

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