A good deal of Vampire Weekend’s coverage is making hay over the African influence. Again. The truth is that the band trades in an even broader multicultural mash-up. It’s not just how powerful of an influence African culture is in American music (cf. the past 100 years of popular music), but how indiscriminately most art now draws from a panoply of cultural supply. At least VW are no less mash-up artists than Girl Talk. And in using the same essential methods that produced Jazz–relying on African-inflected rhythms and scales and European instrumentation–Vampire Weekend has merged a symphonic sensibility, yes, African rhythms, and deceivingly simple pop structuring to produce a serious follow-up to their rightfully acclaimed debut.

The biggest difference between the albums is that the new one, Contra, features more front-and-center synth parts, increasing keyboard player Rostam Batmanglij’s visibility. The resulting tunes feel a little more New Wave (especially the super-cute “White Sky” and the exceedingly dancey “Giving Up the Gun”), but also seem to have added depth due to increased variation. It may be unknowable if it was planned, but the album progresses from a herky jerky start, more reflective of their previous work, a crest in the middle with stand-outs “Taxi Cab” and “Run,” to a smoother, more commandingly integrated series of songs (“Diplomat’s Son” and “I Think U R A Contra” in particular) that wraps things up. I still don’t know quite what singer Ezra Koenig’s talking about most of the time, but he sings all his postmodern signifiers sweetly. Which is enough for me. Oh, and there’s a little bit of autotune on “California English,” which is also apparently still a big deal. (XL Recordings) –Erik Bryan

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