# Vampire Weekend – *Contra*: Album Review
Vampire Weekend's second album, *Contra*, was not exactly what I expected.
This is a band I think I've heard of... maybe. *Contra* is an album cover I feel like I've seen on a T-shirt at a Goodwill. Rather than avoid it, I decided to face my fears head-on and find out what the hell Vampire Weekend is actually doing.
## Horchata
The album opens with "Horchata," which has the distinct feeling of *The Girl from Ipanema* being produced as a Bollywood musical.
Then, suddenly, Mumford & Sons appears like fucking leprechauns, with all kinds of Appalachian—or Irish, or whatever—planks, wooden shipping crates, and patio furniture being hit with spoons for percussion.
And you know those little rainbow-colored rolling xylophones made for toddlers that you pull on a string?
There is 100% one of those clinking around in the background.
I may sound like I'm hating on this already, but I actually haven't decided if I hate it. This is all very fluffy, polished, and smells faintly of generational wealth.
Do I love it?
No.
But I don't hate it... yet.
In places, it does sound like background music for a Nintendo game.
Lyrically, it seems to be about drinking horchata in December, but most of it I'm missing because the singer's voice is bouncing all over the shop. The whole track is aggressively cheery—like a modern pharmaceutical commercial for high blood pressure medication where wealthy couples in linen pants fly kites on a private beach while the side-effects warning reads something about "may cause sudden loss of music taste."
## White Sky
"White Sky" starts up, and the dynamics and sound palette are so identical to the first song that I barely noticed the track changed.
But then it mutates into a Paul Simon tribute act.
The beats, melodies, and instrumentation are so heavily borrowed from Graceland-era Simon that somebody needs to call a lawyer.
This is definitely something I can imagine my mom getting down to in 1990 while wearing a visor. I'm not sure she'd like it as much as her beloved Don Johnson *Heartbeat* cassette, but this would make her feel sophisticated and superior to her neighbors because she can snap her fingers to polyrhythms while making potato salad.
## Holiday
"Holiday" is a ska song.
Ska is dead.
Ska was buried in 1998 in a checkerboard coffin, and yet here we are, exhuming the corpse.
This is annoying, and everything in the mix is compressed like those strippers in the trunk of my car.
Haha.
Don't worry. The cops will find them.
The cars parked at a casino in Las Vegas.
Haha. I'm just kidding.
The cops aren't going to find them.
Anyway, there is an interesting breakdown in the middle with some cool drums and a neat guitar arpeggio, but then—BAM—we're right back to the post-third-wave-ska horn bounces.
Were the Squirrel Nut Zippers a ska band? Because this is exactly what I imagine they sound like if so.
Oh, fuck.
My foot is actually tapping.
God damn it.
It's horribly catchy.
I hate myself.
## California English
The vocals here are drenched in so much digital garbage—Auto-Tune, pitch-shifters, delay, vocal choppers—that it sounds like a Siri update having a fucking breakdown.
I would love to drag this band into a single-car garage, unplug all their rackmount studio effects, and hand them acoustic instruments just to see if they are real human beings or CGI constructs created by an algorithm.
Some strings pop up later in a breakdown section that is almost interesting, but they've relied so heavily on contemporary studio gimmicks that this track is going to sound massively dated.
I mean, it's 2026 and this already sounds like yesterday's digital landfill.
## Taxi Cab
This one is a little different sonically.
We get a sparse, delicate beat and a boatload of reverb as Ezra sings about taking a taxi cab around town and visiting various spots.
For the first time on the record, I feel like the lyrics actually mean something.
This sounds like an event the singer actually lived through, and you can tell he felt genuine human emotions instead of trying to create emotion through effects.
The ending devolves into what I can only describe as EDM chamber music—a delicate string section sitting on top of a thumping kick drum and corporate studio claps.
It's weird, but it kind of works.
## Run
Again, the drums really stand out on this one.
It's an interesting arrangement as it stops, starts, shifts gears, and changes time signatures.
However, there is just a bit too much electronic video-game synth work, and the horns and strings all sound completely plastic—like they were triggered by a MIDI keyboard.
String and horn players are credited in the liner notes of the album, but it all sounds wildly fake.
Still, I don't love this, but I don't hate it either.
Which is maybe the worst way to feel about someone's art.
It's very poppy, but the drums keep saving the entire record for me. Curious, intricate beats pop up song after song. And the drums throughout this record have this dry, deadpan, punchy tone that reminds me of Primus's *Brown Album*, which is a compliment that Vampire Weekend definitely doesn't deserve.
I think I see the overall vision here.
It's like they're trying to modernize every artist they fell in love with as young lads growing up in New York City.
## Cousins
A fantastic, crazy, and fresh intro gives off massive Ween vibes, and then—BOOM—we're dragged right back into 90s ska territory.
This feels very Sublime in its delivery, tempo, and style. It's a decent attempt at 90s-era whatever-the-hell-that-kind-of-music-was-called.
Fuck!
I'm tapping my foot again.
Someone shoot me.
Ezra is singing about everyone's cousins, and the whole time I'm just waiting for the cousins to smoke crack or rob a liquor store like in a Sublime song.
But alas, no.
They missed that part of the tribute.
## Giving Up the Gun
Here, the Vampire fellows sashay directly into four-on-the-floor disco territory.
Now, here's the joke of this entire record: musically, they are shamelessly stealing from every culture and genre they can.
But Ezra's voice is so hopelessly whiny and distinct that it acts as a bizarre glue holding these Frankenstein tracks together and keeping them from sounding too derivative.
You know.
Derivative.
But not **TOO** derivative.
This song kind of feels like Nine Inch Nails if Trent Reznor were on a heavy prescription of Zoloft and eating mushrooms by the pool.
The ending loses steam fast as this synth drone sits there uselessly. The drummer, Chris Tomson, tries his damndest to make this interesting, but nope.
This was the first track to break the four-minute mark, and it desperately needed someone in the studio with the courage to take a blunt knife to the master tapes.
## Diplomat's Son
They decide to rip off Kraftwerk on this one.
It sounds like a chaotic blender mix of Kraftwerk's "Autobahn," "Tour de France," and "Trans-Europe Express" all smashed into a single arrangement.
But as the six-minute torture session continues, it starts to take on the distinct feel of being performed on a $30 Casio keyboard using a preset reggae/pop rhythm button.
This sounds cheap, and no amount of EQ or compression is going to fix it.
I want to like this song.
In fact, I want to like all of these songs.
There is talent here in the arrangement, and occasionally something brilliant happens musically, but I just don't care for the overall limp, overproduced packaging.
Halfway through, the song suddenly shifts into a player-piano, Old West saloon-bar feel, and then just as quickly flips back into that half-Casio, half-Paul Simon, half-Mumford & Sons Frankenstein whatever.
I have to ask:
Who is the target demographic for this?
Young college girls who want to pretend they're in a 1980s safari documentary?
## I Think Ur a Contra
This final track feels like something the Beatles would have recorded if Paul stayed alive and, more importantly, if they had stayed together into the late '70s.
Musically, it kind of sounds like "When I'm Sixty-Four" on Quaaludes.
Which is kind of fun!
It is a nice, mellow ending to the album, though. I'll give it that.
It's not quite a full ballad because of that heavy, pounding bass-drum sound, but it gets close. It also drags back that Mumford & Sons acoustic vibe in spots, especially during the fade-out.
# The Wrap-Up
So, what did we learn today?
*Contra* was definitely not what I expected.
When I read "American rock band" on their Wikipedia page, I expected... well, rock.
This album is mostly softer than yacht rock, which is a new category of music I'm dubbing **Limp Rock™**.
And then they throw in a side order of 90s ska so you don't fall asleep.
Maybe that's what passes for rock now.
I don't know.
What I do know is that there are far too many string sections shoehorned into these songs. The arrangements are fun and clever, sure, but they've gone overboard with studio effects on everything.
And for the love of God, please tell their mastering engineer to turn the compression knobs down!
Overall, I give *Contra* **2.5 out of 5 stars**.
I'd rather listen to this than, say, Kanye or KISS.
I didn't hate it, but I certainly don't respect it.
It's an overproduced museum piece for a very specific demographic that will not leave a lasting mark on musical history.
And there you have it: *Contra*.
A weird, polished, genre-hopping collection of ska, Paul Simon, Kraftwerk, disco, Mumford & Sons, electronic production, strings, and whatever else Vampire Weekend could find lying around the cultural recycling bin.