the black angel's death song

Vampire Weekend's Vampire Weekend (2008)

Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut is, at this time of writing, my favorite album of the year. Its eleven tracks (spread out over 34 minutes) are so compulsively listenable and cheery that it’d be hard to imagine someone not falling in love with them. Most reviews of Vampire Weekend have focused on the band’s world music influences—particularly from African pop—and certainly VW’s marvelously catchy use of percussion is one the album’s highlights, but there is also much more in store here. For one, lead singer Ezra Koenig’s wonderfully odd voice engages from the first track, “Mansard Roof,” a perfect opener that introduces the listener not only to the band’s unique sound, but also to some lovely and fragmented storytelling (“The Argentines collapse in defeat/The admiralty surveys the remnants of the fleet”). Next are “Oxford Comma” and “A-Punk.” The former is one of the album’s truly great songs, an offbeat ditty about the importance of being honest, but most notable, perhaps, for name-checking Lil’ Jon—“he always tells the truth,” Keonig sings. “A-Punk,” a short vignette about finding something to do after college, leads to “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,” possibly the album’s most fully-realized track, as well as the most characteristic of the band’s sound. “M79,” with its lush string section and talk of “coronation rickshaw grab,” highlights the band’s quirky interests, as does “Campus,” a more straightforward narrative about awkward college romance, which also contains the album’s most memorable use of alliteration: “Walk to class/In front of ya/Spilled kefir/On your keffiyah.” “Bryn,” the next track, has the prettiest lyrics on the album, and Koenig’s delivery and Chris Tomson’s percussion perfectly accentuate the three short verses, culminating in the conclusion that “no Kansas-born beetle could ever come close to that free.” “One (Blake’s Got a New Face)” is infinitely cute, but I think I would like any song that points out how “English breakfast tastes like Darjeeling.” The next song, “I Stand Corrected,” is not as good as what follows or preceded it, but even as the album’s only true misstep, it allows the band to try out some pretty interesting stuff. The penultimate track, “Walcott,” the song that most directly addresses the band’s privileged background (although most of these songs do touch on that theme), urges the titular character to leave Cape Cod, given that “The Bottleneck is a shit-show/Hyannisport is a ghetto.” Not since Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan (1990) has self-aware preppiness been so endearing. VW’s closing track, “The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance,” with its forceful rhythm section and Koenig's dead-on delivery, ends the album in very much the same way that it began: beautifully. Pondering the possibility of Vampire Weekend becoming one of the best bands in recent memory, I’d say they stand a pretty good chance.