Album Review: Vampire Weekend-Vampire Weekend (by Bob Short)

3/5

To watch the blogosphere hype factory running at full tilt is truly an amazing thing. In August, Pitchfork Media was blandly reporting some new bunch of New York guitar rock minimalists called Vampire Weekend. By January the internet was abuzz with terms like "prep rock" and wondering whether Ivy Leaguers (the quartet formed at Columbia) were nothing more than indie hobbyists. When the album was released, there was an immediate accolades arms race and a contest to see which reviewers could best bluff knowledge of West African pop. So does the album deserve the attention? Well, yes and no. Running slightly over a half hour, this breezy eleven song set is a blur of mostly uptempo tracks about seducing underclassmen led by Ezra Koenig’s impressive falsetto and fragile guitar work. After a few years of doom-laden chamber rock and chirpy retro-pop dominating the underground, the first few listens are nothing less than the shock of the new- timelessly cheap keyboards, bouncy rhythms- but further listening reveals Vampire Weekend as vanilla flavored world music. The grit and texture is nowhere to be found, it seems as if Koenig and co. only heard of Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Youssou N’dour from their Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel cameos. Highlights are the propulsive “A-Punk” and the opening “Mansard Roof”, which reveal the group’s virtues with a loose structure and great vocal outro. The overwhelmingly samey songs and mild pastel tones of the sounds coming out of your speakers will soon relegate this album to sonic wallpaper, and after five or six listens you will probably be wishing you picked up So and Graceland instead.