When we are young, our relationship to the world can aptly be described as a kind of infatuation. Like a kid with a crush, we’re carried away by the thrill of discovery, convinced that the object of our love can do no wrong. Yet as we grow older, we all experience a “loss of innocence” – a realization that life isn’t as safe or hospitable as we imagined it to be. This is a gradual process for some, a sudden and painful revelation for others. It can be prompted by many things – parental divorce, the death of a loved one, physical or emotional abuse, chronic illness, bigotry or racial prejudice, and economic hardship, to name a few. Whatever the cause may be, we grapple with feelings of disillusionment, struggling to reorient ourselves in a world we thought we knew.
My last post examined Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut album, a groundbreaking musical romp that pulsates with childlike curiosity and enthusiasm. On that album, we met four college dudes infatuated with life in all of its particularity, dizzy with young love, and itching to see the world. However, a storm loomed on the horizon. The album’s closing track, “The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance,” portrayed an impending conflict between youthful idealism and uncontrollable, oppressive forces. It also raised an unsettling question: Will our narrator be able to maintain his innocence when confronted with life’s harsher realities? This track leads us directly into Vampire Weekend’s second album: Contra.
Released in 2010, the sequel to Vampire Weekend debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 charts,1 launching the band to new heights of superstardom. Like its predecessor, Contra was a musical smorgasbord, jam-packed with buoyant classical arrangements, lively drum fills, and rollicking guitar riffs. Like its predecessor, it also exuded youthful optimism. But the sonic palette was richer this time, enlivened by a host of new colors and textures: ska, dancehall music,2 electro-pop, Auto-Tune,3 Latin beats, speed rap, and rave music4 (all seamlessly interwoven by the ingenious production of Rostam Batmanglij). Listening to the songs, you get the sense that the band is traveling, refining their sound as they expose themselves to new influences. Yet their expanded vision of the world is accompanied by a deeper awareness of life’s hardships. Life, it turns out, is much more complicated than they thought.
As we’ll see in this week’s analysis, the lyrics on Contra explore the loss of innocence. Life still excites our narrator, but doubt has begun to seep in, threatening to spoil his enjoyment of the world around him. On Vampire Weekend, the planet was a crush fluttering its eyelashes, a friend with its arm slung around our shoulders. But on Contra, we discover that it’s also capable of throwing punches.
Analysis
The title of Vampire Weekend’s sophomore record has deep thematic significance. As lead singer Ezra Koenig elaborated in an interview with Pitchfork,
… what’s so interesting about the word “contra” – and why people make a big deal of it as an album title – is that it means so many different things that are linked by the root of the word, which is “against.” So even though it refers to the counter-revolution in Nicaragua, and the video game, and the contrabassoon, and Marx-contra-Hegel, it all means the same thing. It’s an incredibly basic, primal idea.5
Contra, the Latin foundation for words like “contrary,” “contrarian,” and “contradict,” signifies opposition, a fitting label for an album that reckons with the world’s potential for hostility. The album’s songs unspool this thematic thread, tracing the variety of ways that conflict surfaces as we come of age.
“Horchata,” Contra‘s first song, echoes the opening track of Vampire Weekend in its fascination with concrete imagery – lips, teeth, boots, fists, chairs, sidewalks. Koenig’s loose, shimmering wordplay is still present, too, evidenced by the song’s clever rhyming of balaclava, aranciata, and Masada. It’s a warm, inviting introduction. Yet the environment isn’t as cheery as the Cape Cod of “Mansard Roof.” Changing seasons now cause discomfort: “Winter’s cold is too much to handle / Pincher crabs that pinch at your sandals.” They also expose a sobering fact: The narrator’s delight is fleeting, vulnerable to dissipate as time passes: “Here comes the feeling you thought you’d forgotten… Oh, you had it, but oh no, you lost it.” Looking around him, the narrator witnesses decay in surroundings that once arrested his attention. Sadly, he sees this deterioration for what it is – an unavoidable, universal part of life:
Years go by and hearts start to harden
Those palms and firs that grew in your garden
Are falling down and nearing the rosebeds
The roots are shooting up through the tool shed
On the song “Holiday,” the narrator displays similar desires to relish life’s comforts. Yet once again, he finds his rest and relaxation tainted by the prospect of loss. The song may celebrate escapism, but it also contains unnerving references to civil unrest, bombs, and AK-47s – a wider world steeped in conflict. The narrator wonders whether he’s capable of distracting himself from life’s grim realities: “But if I wait for a holiday / Could it stop my fears?” Covering his ears doesn’t block out the noise.
Later on the album, “Giving Up the Gun” explores the passing of time in more detail. Here, the lyricist speaks with two voices. The first is an aging warrior who reflects on the loss of his former strength and prominence:
When I was 17, I had wrists like steel
And I felt complete
But now my body fades behind a brass charade
And I’m obsolete
The second voice affirms the validity of these complaints, acknowledging that the warrior’s sword has “grown old and rusty” and is now “locked up like a trophy / Forgetting all the things it’s done.” Yet this voice also offers reassurance, suggesting that the warrior’s fight isn’t over: “I see you shine in your way / Go on, go on, go on.” Time’s relentless onslaught may have shaken our protagonist, but it hasn’t dulled his determination to make an impact on the world. Not yet, anyway.
While Vampire Weekend‘s preoccupation with the broader world hummed below the surface, audible in the album’s instrumentation and the songwriter’s vocabulary, Contra references the planet directly. The narrator remains enchanted with the world, and he yearns to love it as he once did, with youthful abandon. But he’s starting to wonder whether that’s possible when society seems headed downhill. In the glorious chorus of “California English,” the narrator revels in technological progress, awed by humanity’s ability to communicate across vast distances:
Blasted from a disconnected light switch
Through the condo that they’ll never finish
Bounced across a Saudi satellite dish
And through your brain to California English
In the song’s bridge, the narrator meditates on the destructive aftermath of this progress, which may be irreversible. Yet he also refuses to relinquish hope, urging his lover to stay optimistic: “If it’s all a curse / And just getting worse / Baby, please don’t lose your faith in the good Earth.”
Later, on “Run,” the lyricist offers a succinct and sobering picture of life in a disempowering capitalist society: “Every dollar counts / And every morning hurts / We mostly work to live / Until we live to work.” Our narrator has entered the working world, and he isn’t sure that its promised profits are worth the cost. Mired in the daily grind, he fantasizes about ditching responsibility with his lover: “It struck me that the two of us could run.” But we’re left wondering: Is this hope as brittle as the doomed escapism of “Holiday”?
“Cousins,” a blistering, frenetic jam session that showcases Vampire Weekend’s raw instrumental prowess, continues this theme of disillusionment. On the surface, the song celebrates creativity, culture, self-discovery, and legacy. Yet its bridge bears an ominous refrain: “You could turn your back on the bitter world.” For the first time, the narrator realizes that capitulation is possible. He might surrender to the world’s opposition, abandoning faith in its goodness and following the same path that he urged his lover to flee. Success is no longer a given. Like the song “Cousins” itself, the narrator has boatloads of energy and potential. But he can only take so many hits, and one day, he might reach a breaking point.
Contra‘s loss of innocence is most apparent in its examination of relationships. While Vampire Weekend explored the excitement of budding romance, Contra exposes fault lines beneath the surface of the songwriter’s love. On “Aristocrat,” the narrator reflects on an argument with his partner, lamenting his doubts about the relationship and his inability to express them. He and his partner are “Nostalgic for garbage, desperate for time” – simultaneously disgusted by their troubled history and unable to let go of what they have. A once life-giving connection has now become hostile territory:
In the shadow of your first attack
I was questioning and looking back
You said, “Baby, we don’t speak of that”
Like a real aristocrat
The struggle to communicate continues on “Diplomat’s Son,” which narrates a seaside tryst between gay lovers set in 1981. The lyrics are shrouded in uncertainty and hesitation. The narrator yearns for physical intimacy, and he knows that his friend is a willing partner. Yet he’s also aware that he isn’t ready to commit, and he worries that his departure may break his lover’s heart: “To offer it to you would be cruel / When all I want to do is use, use you.” Once again, the narrator’s relationships are revealed as a double-edged sword, as capable of inflicting wounds as they are of defending what he cares about.
Conclusions
As the album draws to a close, Vampire Weekend strips back their instrumentation, making room for Koenig’s softest and most heartbreaking vocal yet. “I Think Ur a Contra” hearkens back to the central theme of the album, and its lyrics show our narrator crumbling under the full weight of disillusionment. The opening stanzas mourn the loss of romantic innocence:
I had a feeling once
That you and I
Could tell each other everything
For two months
But even with our oath
With truth on our side
When you turn away from me
It’s not right
Then, in a gutting twist, the narrator turns his gaze away from the world’s opposition, identifying his lover as an embodiment of the same hostility: “I think you’re a contra.” As the song continues, the narrator vents feelings of anger, abandonment, and betrayal. Yet the finale of the song is gentle and plaintive, suffused with unrequited longing:
Never pick sides
Never choose between two
But I just wanted you
I just wanted you
It’s as if the narrator is saying, “Was love too much to ask for?” While he speaks of a breakup here, his words take on a larger significance in light of Contra‘s narrative journey. We can hear them as the cries of an anguished lover, or we can hear them as the sorrows of all people broken and bruised by the world they longed to love unreservedly. The same planet that kindles our affections with its beauty also dashes our dearest hopes with its brutality. Standing in the rubble of tragedy, bruised and bewildered, we begin to wonder whether we were foolish to open our hearts. Existential crises open and fester, challenging our most cherished beliefs. Why love a world that will inevitably ruin us? This haunting question lingers at the edges of Contra, and it also foreshadows Vampire Weekend’s magnum opus, the album that cemented their status as all-time greats. On Contra, our narrator glimpsed clouds gathering on the horizon. But next week, on Modern Vampires of the City, he will step into the very heart of the storm.
Click below to read the third chapter of my vampire weekend series!
References
1. “Contra (Album).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 14 April 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_(album).
2. Simpson, Dave. “Vampire Weekend: Contra.” The Guardian, 7 January 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/jan/07/vampire-weekend-contra-cd-review.
3. Hawthorne, Marc. “Vampire Weekend: Contra.” The A.V. Club, 12 January 2010, https://www.avclub.com/vampire-weekend-contra-1798164118.
4. Bedwell, Will. “Music Review: Vampire Weekend’s ‘Contra.'” The Warrior Beat, 9 February 201o, https://web.archive.org/web/20120316162859/http://thewarriorbeat.com/2010/02/09/music-review-vampire-weekends-contra/.
5. Dombal, Ryan. “Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig Talks New Album, Confronts the Haters.” Pitchfork, 1 October 2009, https://pitchfork.com/news/36671-vampire-weekends-ezra-koenig-talks-new-album-confronts-the-haters/.
Words for Wayfarers 