Tonight: Contra Listening Party at Scoot Inn!
WOXY and Austinist are pleased to present an official get-the-ball-rolling-even-further-on-the-crazy-hype-machine listening party for the much-loved and much-loathed spiffy dressers from the northeast, Vampire Weekend. Because, if their faces are going to be utterly everpresent (see their recent feature interview in The New Yorker, of all elite places, or their just-produced and astonishingly immaculate MTV Unplugged set (yes, MTV Unplugged)), the new album deserves at least a solid beer-in-hand listen before deciding whether this foursome is the true salvation for yuppies with a heart/people who like Paul Simon, or a sign that the horsemen of the crap apocalypse like to wear cashmere cardigans with collars fully popped.
So here's the word on the second album, Contra: it features ten neatly clipped tracks, expands musically on the precedent set by the first album, maybe is a little less catchy on first listen than what you'd expect, and is destined to declare for the band that they are wayyy too talented to be a one-album wonder. Also, about the name Contra: the LP is absolutely not about Reagan era scandal, Iran or Nicaragua or anything else that intrepid studiers of potential allusion could unearth. It seems, more likely, to be a dose of in-band irony, as this work is "against" the claims that the band is nothing more than a bunch of Africa-appropriating sissies who aim to oppress us with their opinions on commas and sailing the rough seas of uppercrust asininity.
Basically, the album is good, and you should hear it. At the Scoot Inn. Tonight. Check out WOXY's listing for a chance to win a free "Cousins" 7", and pop in here to buy your ticket for what's sure to be a very hot (and very sold out) VW live show at Stubb's April 10th.
