Contra

Vampire Weekend! The band I've heard all about but never listened to outside of the "Ay Ay Ay" song that's always on radio. I'm glad I finally get an excuse to see what all the fuss is about.

Contra attempts to craft a tropical summery atmosphere by utilising synths and non-western music in a psychedelic manner, and achieves this pretty well. From start to finish it feels like a tropical beach vibe, similar to Desire I Want To Turn Into You which I got a few days ago. It gives me flashbacks to Merriweather Post Pavilion from the original list, which went for a similar theme, and I'm guessing AnCo was an influence.

That said, despite the success of the atmosphere they're going for I actually don't like the album. I compared it to Desire I Want to Turn Into You and MPP, but those albums have big hooky songs as anchor points throughout the album for me to latch onto, Contra seems to be going all in on the summery vibe. As I said before, the sound they're going for they do pretty well but I think Vampire Weekend intended for the album to wash over you, which is fine, but I don't really like it.

Should it be on the main list: No

Top 3 songs: Taxi Cab, Cousins, Giving Up the Gun,

Those first three Vampire Weekend albums are so iconic. I go back and forth between them on which is my favorite but overall I think Contra is probably the one. It's got a perfect mix of the youthful goofiness of the debut with the more mature songwriting of MVOTC.