Vampire Weekend: Contra vs Moby: Play

Vampire Weekend: Contra

I must admit that Contra is a bit wasted on me. Perhaps by not watching Buffy I've robbed myself of cultural expertise necessary to appreciate Vampire Weekend. Either that or the hint of ska underpinning most songs was, like wasabi on sushi, enough to render it indigestible to me.

Beyond that "Holiday", had me bending over my speakers in concern that I had damaged them. Fortunately for me (although not for VW...), it turned out that the speakers were faithfully representing the sound of broken speakers.

"Taxi Cab" is tender:

You stand so close to me

Like the future was supposed to be

"California English" makes obvious it's use of Auto-Tune. This was probably intentional, and somehow meta, but still sounds annoying.

"Giving Up the Gun" had me singing along on the first pass! Interestingly enough, it's melody sounds a lot like Moby, which bring me to my next review:

Moby's Play:

(Which, btw, seems to be free of the accursed Auto-Tune.)

This album is awesome. I had never heard the album before, but recognized pretty much all the songs from radio play, and in this case I do not mean that as an insult. This is chock-full of sweet sounds. Since buying the album for DM'99 I've probably listened to it 8 times. Every song is interesting enough to listen to intentionally, rocks when turned up loud when the kids are at school, provides nice background for a party, and as my wife proved to me is sexy enough to...

Well, anyway, I will not review specific songs because they are uniformly smooth except to say that nothing makes me want to buy a Glock like "South Side". Gangbanging sounds so pretty and fun!

There are valid critiques, the biggest being Moby's precipitous decline, but at least once in the late '90's he nailed it. No, it's not rhythmically complicated, and sampling still seems a bit like cheating to me, but this is house music at it's best.

Decision: Play