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AMSTERDAM - The first songs for the second album of the American indie band Vampire Weekend, Contra, were already finished before there self-titled debut was released in 2008. The two years after the release were mainly used to think about the direction of the second album which was released in January.

“I think that Contra has a wider range of vibes and tempo's and styles”, explains drummer Chris Tomson. “And our singer Ezra uses different parts of his voice. “We wanted to compose a wider range of feels, whereas the first one all came together in a similar way and was recorded in a very similar way.”

Hype
At the start of 2008, Vampire Weekend became the hype of that year, thanks to bloggers all around the world who were writing about songs like Mansard Roof and A-Punk.

That was a weird time for the complete band. Suddenly they were famous. “When we recorded our first album in New York, we still had jobs. We quited them only until our first tour.”

Gig
January the 29th in 2008 was the date of their first gig, but at that time their debut was ready for a year. “After a while we wanted to do some new things and we started to write some new songs again. So at the moment we had our first tour and present our songs on the stage, we already finished some songs for Contra. Not just some thematic or cohesive things, but complete new songs to move forward.”

African
The hype that was first created on the internet reached other media as well. There they were called a band with 'African influences'. Tomson never felt much connection with that.

“We never even remotely approached playing African music, mainly because we're playing stuff that we'd come up with. None of us took lessons and studied African music theory or whatever. For us, we always tried to synthesise and include pretty much anything that we liked, Western or none.”

Tomson blames the media: “If that's how certain people came to the album and that's how they listen to it, like the preconceived notion what they should be hearing and where they should be listening for.”

Western
But Tomson decided to not worry to much about it. “Musicians from Africa that we've met, don't seem to concerned about what comes from where. That seems to be more of a Western hang up. Where everything comes from, how can you do this sort of thing. They just see it as music and take it as that.”

But he does have an Africa related dream: performing during the World Cup soccer in South Africa. “I don't think that's going to happen though.”

Kristiaan Asscheman

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