Vampire Weekend's eponymous first full-length was a self-consciously clever mishmash of Afro-pop beats and melodies, American songcraft and naive, collegiate pseudo-intellectual dabbling that somehow avoided the novelty status it deserved, instead, achieving fleeting indie-scene godhead/SNL performance-worthy status. It sounded a little like globetrotting quasi-literates updating the early K Records catalog, and a lot like a smug attempt to do little more than make a pop album incorporating Paul Simon as an influence just because nobody else was doing it.
Contra sounds a lot like that, too. Only better; much, much better.
