Vampire Weekend has a new song today, via their website. It is from their forthcoming album
Contra, due out January 12th on
XL. It suggests three things about the new album. All of them are after the jump.
First of all, let's define some terms. According to Wikipedia, "Horchata" is the name for several kinds of traditional beverages, made of ground almonds, sesame seeds, rice, barley or tigernuts. According to Super Nintendo, "Contra" is a title awarded to a superior soldier possessing almost super human drive and ability, while excelling in guerrilla tactics. OK.
Let's listen.
Here are some jumps to conclusions we can make:
- They still like words: Rhyming "horchata" with "balaclava" suggests to us that they are making a concentrated effort to use words that are both Columbia smart-slang triple word scores AND jungle-beach referential (sounding, at least). We're not sure if these are negative or positive points to the Contra score. Maybe an extra life?
- Production values are new-ish: Ezra still sounds like a summer day at the Polo-Ralph-Lauren beach of rugby, but the instrumentals have taken a bit of an electronic turn. The rhythmic pummeling, strings, and mingling flute parts suggest a bigger, bolder production effort. Rostam Batmanglij probably had a field day. But it was definitely a Vampire Weekend field day, and not whatever that side project was (besides done with Fruity-Loops).
- Contra will probably be Vampire Weekend 2.0: And it definitely won't be Contra III: The Alien Wars.
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joe puglisi
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Vampire Weekend on Myspace