Vampire Weekend--Contra [2010]

In their follow-up to their eponymous 2008 release, Vampire Weekend have conjured up their delicious blend of lycanthropy for Contra, their latest project.

There's something so deliciously infectious about Vampire Weekend's music. The sound is playful and celebratory, yet still manages to feel decidedly left-field. The new album opens with "Horchata," one of my instant favorites. Vampire Weekend have gone all-out with their instrumentation on this album, and among other odds and ends, you can make out marimbas, xylophones, synths, and strings all over "Horchata," which appropriately enough, really makes me wish horchata were easier to find in space. I'm not kidding, either. Major Tom would kill some horchata right now.

"California English" gets extremely playful both lyrically and musically. During one vocal break, vocalist Ezra Koenig hams it up: "Sweet carob rice cake / she don't care how the sweets taste / fake Philly cheese streak / but she use real toothpaste." It's a bit reminiscent of Anthony Kiedis' nonsensical vox, but hey, VW are all about being a little playful.

"I think Ur a Contra" certainly stands out as a personal favorite, and as other reviewers have pointed out, it may function as an ode to The Clash. In a rather "mature" VW moment, the instruments settle down to let Koenig's vocals soar. Midway through this cut, Koenig croons: "You wanted good schools / and friends with pools / you're not a contra."

"Diplomat's Son" narrates what's been described by Rolling Stone as a "boarding-school story." The speaker croons: "That night I smoked a joint / with my best friend / We found ourselves in bed/ When I woke up he was gone." Again, I'm not sure that in this case that it's important to know the full context. This track might prove VW's most successful appropriation of island/reggae influences (and certainly these guys are hugely-influenced by The Clash).

The conclusion I've come to is that if you want to enjoy Vampire Weekend, it's best not to over-think anything. "Holiday," for instance, isn't going to change your entire existential ethos with its poignant lyrics ("Holiday, oh a holiday / and the best one of the year"), but it will by Jove make you dance!

For this reviewer, the band's greatest success remains its daunting command of instrumentation. Somehow Vampire Weekend produce something which sounds paradoxically polished and rough around the edges at the same time. The instruments on this album are masterfully played, yet the sounds aren't over-produced (perhaps partly because VW choose to record independently?)

Memorable line: "In December drinking horchata/ I look psychotic in a balaclava."

Buy Some Horchata-Themed Greatness!

--Major Tom

Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra--Kollaps Tradixionales

We should count our lucky stars over Canada each time our northerly neighbors from A Silver Mt. Zion offer a new release. Pardon me--each time Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memoial Orchestra offer up a release. Kollaps Tradixionales heralds ASMZ's first release since 2008's 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons and stands as the orchestra's sixth L.P. under Constellation Records. It's always a bit frightening to see a great band suffer a lineup change (ASMZ have lost three members and gained drummer David Payant). While similar lineup shifts have Munson'd many a popular band, I honestly don't think ASMZ have lost a step due to these exclusions/additions.

Defining the "Silver Mt. Zion sound" is a fool's errand upon which I have no great desire to embark. Sure they dish up hints of the instrumental swells typical of the current "post" bands, yet ASMZ's instruments have always conjured a sound that I can only describe as distressed. It's beautiful and sparse and ugly and reminiscent of the sorts of projects genius obscura Bill Frisell might show up on. The Constellation website even struggles the articulate the album's voice, resorting to such tags as "afrobeat," "bazouki," "bop," and even "Anglo-Saxon folk." No matter what you choose to call them, ASMZ remain one of the freshest and most daring prescences in music. Unlike the litany of post-rock coattail riders, ASMZ seem to locate the perfect ratio of instrumental breaks to lyrical passages. Meanwhile, Efrim Menuck's dark genius smolders as keenly as ever. Menuck doesn't just support ASMZ--he is the sound.

Now maybe it's the twelve vacant "tracks," maybe it's the overdriven blues figures, or maybe it's the ham-fisted polemics, but something about 13 Blues just doesn't sit as well with me as releases like Horses in the Sky or Godspeed's f#a# (infinity). Despite considerable upheavals within the band, the music on Kollaps Tradixionales feels strangely "truer" to ASMZ.

But let's get down to brass tacks: what about the new album? Firstly, prepare yourself for the slow-burning intensity that ASMZ are known for. The track titles are nearly as compelling as the songs themselves, especially titles such as "I Built Myself a Metal Bird" and the corresponding "I Fed My Metal Bird the Wings of Other Metal Birds." It's interesting to see these bird metaphors--which often work to symbolize hope within the ASMZ catalogue--sustaining more inauspicious implications. The opening track, "There is a Light" feels like an immense and stilted waltz, ending with the repetitive refrain "Tell me there is a light." Despite those who brand Menuck a seething pessimist, the track seems to at least call for some ray of hope in the postmodern wasteland. Whether or not this hope/redemption will ever arrive is another matter. "I Built Myself a Metal Bird," with its surging 7/8 time signature, is perhaps the closest ASMZ have come to a straight-out rock number. The album carries a theme on "collapse" divided into three movements, the last of which, "Kollaps Tradicional," strikes me as an outlier with its somersaulting tribal drum tones. It sounds cool, but perhaps these rhythms feel a bit (too?) polished for ASMZ. Maybe I just miss Eric Craven and Scott Gilmore. No matter--even ASMZ's more "mainstream" moments fall light years beyond the realm of radio rawk, and I suspect the orchestra's sound to evolve further with time.

Unfortunately, lyrics for Kollaps Tradixionales are tougher to locate than Jeremy Piven's hairline (even in space I can hear people booing). The lyrics that I can make out reinforce my contention that ASMZ are Canada's answer to Radiohead--and perhaps ASMZ delve into deeper and even more obscure territories than Radiohead, especially in light of more accessible releases (ahem, In Rainbows?)

Bottom line: in this spaceman's humble opinion, Kollaps Tradixionales doesn't seek to reinvent the wheel--err, the mountain. But why should it? These avant garde virtuosos have already established a distinctive and provocative voice that, try though some might, simply can't be replicated. Now kill the lights, sit back and enjoy the bazouki, or the afrobeat, or the techno-billy-bop, or whatever the hell we're calling this fine tapestry.

Sell Me That Noise Right Damn-Now, Son!

--Major Tom