Vampire Weekend - Contra

I heard you play guitar down at a seedy barWhere skinheads used to fight

I did not even remotely like this band when their first record came out. Maybe this was due to the enormous hype they received from magazines and internet sites such as pitchfork media, or maybe it's because their music annoyed the piss out of me... one of the two. But after settling into my incredible hatred for the band and feeling okay about it, I heard the song, "Giving up the Gun"  from this, their second LP, and couldn't help but enjoy the crap out of it. With this new knowledge I decided to give the entire record a chance and found myself to enjoy most of it too. It's well documented that this sounds like a Paul Simon, Graceland era rip off, album (sans African choirs and instrumentation), but why is that a bad thing? Who else is doing that? I happen to like that record, it's a classic, so quit giving them crap. Not to make it sound like every song is great on "Contra", but they weren't all great on "Graceland" either (trust me, give it a listen today), but I'd say over half of them are pretty good so might as well give it a listen.


3/5
Favourite track - Giving up the Gun