Reggae influenced indie is hard to perfect, that's got to be a given right? Mr Hudson and The Library can vouch for that, UB40 are exemplars of the point, and it really depends on your opinion of The Police. But it's not often that it can be done well.
You can probably deduce from the above that this debut album from VAMPIRE WEEKEND has one eye on Jamaican beats. But it's not just about that. It's an album of youthful tales that prove to be intelligent without hammering it home like others seem to be right now (quick glance to Los Campesinos! in the corner there). It's optimistic, off-the-cuff and, at times, quite meaningful.
It's a relatively measured album – strings in the right places (like on M79), and what sounds suspiciously like steel drums in others. There's also plenty of Afro-funk guitar, which is perhaps the defining sound of this album. There is even one riff that sounds like something the Teletubbies could dance to (go listen to 'Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa' to understand what I mean).
'Oxford Comma' is great – it sounds like a 50's shoo-wop song, but it's about a particular grammatical nuance, and leads with the line “Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?” It's enough to make you reach for a dictionary just to make sure you get the joke. Something about the album conjures up the imagery of a classic American university (and not just the song 'Campus' either). It's pretty geeky, all in all, but charming geeky.
Some of the lyrics are laugh out loud funny. 'One' is a prime example of this – the lively and catchy tune will stand out this summer because of one strangely amusing line. The delivery of “Blake's got a new face,” displays a non-nauseating good nature – this isn't music to be to be revered in the way of Radiohead, but not to be written off as shallow either. Who ever had a chorus of “This feels so unnatural, Peter Gabriel too?”(Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa). It shows that they're not taking themselves too seriously. This is a relaxing album, without being a boring one. It's going to sound great in the summer, yet at the same time, it seems perfect for the cold British winter (you can wrap 'Oxford Comma' around you like a scarf, honestly).
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The interesting thing is that all of these components can lead to terrible music – but they manage to sidestep all of that. What the secret is it's hard to say, but there is something about this collection that works – especially after repeated listens. They explore their sound enough to keep you interested right until the end, which is half of the challenge in some cases. My advice is to not sneer at this music too quickly – give it a listen and just see whether it appeals to you, just a bit. In theory it should be so annoying, and it's hard to say why it isn't.
It does sound a lot like a subverted version of The Police, but it's much more fun than that. There are elements of The Clash in here, but mainly it's The Police. It's more genre influence at work here, and it's good to hear bands looking elsewhere for their sound. If bands like Vampire Weekend can get into the mainstream by doing something new, then I'm all for it. They have the songs, they have the enthusiasm – they'd be perfect were it not for that little Sting in the tail.
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