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Indie afrobeat – who knew? Vampire Weekend weren't the first band to mix up African musical styles with alternarock (hell, Johnny Marr pulled out hi-life guitar moves with The Smiths), but they were the first to become worldwide critical darlings as a result. Their self-titled debut was basically Graceland for the Purple Sneakers crowd, so Contra has some big shoes to fill.
Impressively the new album walks the line between repeating the trick of the debut – and risking repeating itself – and trying out new directions and potentially lose the listenership. For every archetypically VW moment like the opening 'Horchata' or lively first single 'Cousins' there are touches like 'California English', where Ezra Koenig's voice is autotuned to near T-Pain levels of artificiality, or the 80s -flavoured 'Giving Up The Gun' which should have The Killers kicking themselves for a trick missed. That world domination thing the cool kids have been predicting seems more and more inevitable. Andrew P Street
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