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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed albums.
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Vampire Weekend
by Vampire Weekend
This is the debut album for the quartet of Columbia University alumni.
| LABEL: |
XL |
| RELEASE DATE: |
29 January 2008 |
| DISCS: |
1 disc |
| GENRE(S): |
Rock, Indie |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
91
MSN Consumer Guide (Robert Christgau)
Affecting a clarity and delight that pleases the many and confounds the some, their lyrically alluring, structurally hop-skip-and-jumping songs aren't deep. They're just thoughtful fun.
90
Paste Magazine
This cosmopolitan quartet has streamlined ska, post-punk, chamber music and Afropop into a glorious ultramodern groove.
90
Delusions of Adequacy
This is a magnificent debut, filled with endless melodies, memorable hooks and plenty of toe-tapping moments.
90
PopMatters
Not since Talking Heads bowed out with their masterful 1988 swan song Naked has NYC been so dutifully represented by such a melodically robust collection as the 11 that comprise this eponymous redux of Vampire Weekend’s acclaimed “Blue CD-R” demo.
90
All Music Guide
Fully realized debut albums like Vampire Weekend come along once in a great while, and these songs show that this band is smart, but not too smart for their own good.
90
Under The Radar
This is likely to be the most fun release of the year. [Winter 2008, p.84]
89
Austin Chronicle
As if on cue amid the recent critical hemming and hawing over indie rock's cultural appropriations drops Vampire Weekend's official debut with enough justified buzz to render the entire debate moot.
88
Pitchfork
Bring any baggage you want to this record, and it still returns nothing but warm, airy, low-gimmick pop, peppy, clever, and yes, unpretentious--four guys who listened to some Afro-pop records, picked up a few nice ideas, and then set about making one of the most refreshing and replayable indie records in recent years.
80
Prefix Magazine
Vampire Weekend’s debut comes across as a confident, precise, and, for better and worse, mature collection.
80
Lost At Sea
What is key to this album's effectiveness is how Vampire Weekend's rhythmic momentum enervates the filler, turning another band's less flamboyant 'Campus' into a cymbal-crash-on-every-hit mini-epic, or the nearly irritating 'Blake's Got a New Face' into drunken singalong.
80
musicOMH.com
In places almost carnivalesque, this is a good times album that celebrates positive aspects of the world.
80
Billboard
Listeners are only too lucky to get a hot breath of summer fun in these cold winter months.
80
Boston Globe
At its best, Vampire Weekend takes the exceedingly familiar template of indie rock and invigorates it with a chiming guitar sound that suggests the band has been spending its downtime browsing afropop.org.
80
Drowned In Sound
The production throughout Vampire Weekend is perfect, holding all the various threads together as a coherent whole that manages to sound simple without ever being underwhelming.
80
Hartford Courant
It’s ecstatic music, surely; and intense, too, even as it’s joyful.
80
Observer Music Monthly
At less than 40 minutes long, Vampire Weekend sounds paradoxically both brimming with confidence and something put down as a marker for the future.
80
Slant Magazine
Vampire Weekend's eponymous debut, with its wide range of references rationed across a collection of brief pop morsels, proves the early fascination was no fluke.
80
Spin
Vampire Weekend have made a truely fresh, fun, and smart record. [Feb 2008, p.91]
80
The Guardian
Behind the penny loafers and songs about commas, there's a bold band that can balance dextrous originality with an innate pop sensibility.
80
Vibe
Vampire Weekend have suceeded in putting the hips back in hipster. [Mar 2008, p.98]
80
Q Magazine
Extremely inventive, a litttle uptight and slightly high on their own cleverness, Vampire Weekend are the musical equivalent of a Wes Anderson movie. [Mar 2008, p.109]
80
Blender
Vampire Weekend’s version of globalization is too tightly and smartly woven to be mere dilettantism, and at times Koenig is emphatic, even desperate, about escaping white-bred familiarity.
80
Dot Music
It's rather a genuinely exuberant, joyously infectious and sheerly celebratory affair, its tribal drums, parping keyboards and rippling, brassy guitars offset by sweet vocal harmonies and reverb-laden solos, with Koenig's witty and literate lyrics marking out their crucial difference.
80
New Musical Express
Their strength is that, musically as well as sartorially, they’re unafraid to plunder and repurpose styles previously considered naffer than Bluetooth headsets.
80
Uncut
Cosmopolitan, anglophile, afrobeat--Vampire Weekend are in an Ivy League of their own.
78
Almost Cool
It's probably not substantial enough that it will stick in my head all year (and possibly not even until the ground thaws), but it is a highly enjoyable pop album from a young group who are riding some hype and getting slapped with backlash at the same time.
70
Urb
Although the vocals initially may spark fears of self-indulgent been there’s and done that’s, the musical beast which duels with the lyrics stays on point and goes beyond the point in miraculous fashion.
70
No Ripcord
Vampire Weekend is indie rock with its edges sanded off, polished to a clean, sparkling sheen.
70
Alternative Press
Thier debut album is one of the most inventive in recent memory. [Apr 2008, p.153]
70
Sputnikmusic
Vampire Weekend banks on showering its tribal pop with lyrics poised for literary analysis, skimping pretentious by appearing completely natural.
70
The New York Times
The sheer cleverness of every track is endearing. But it’s also brittle; these songs could use just a little more heart.
70
Tiny Mix Tapes
By the end of the album’s blissful, sparse, empty-Saharan-landscape closer 'The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance,' perfection doesn’t seem to matter much anymore--especially when your mind’s too preoccupied on starting Vampire Weekend again from the beginning.
70
Dusted Magazine
Vampire Weekend is an exemplar of contemporary establishment indie rock, sandblasted clean but striking a dirty pose nonetheless.
70
Rolling Stone
On their debut, Vampire Weekend mostly earn points the old-fashioned way: by writing likable songs you'll be glad to revisit next month.
67
The Onion (A.V. Club)
The young band's saving grace is compactness, which not only saves thousands of dollars in kora-player and backup-singer bills, but also keeps things alert and accessible.
60
NOW Magazine
The Vampire Weekend crew, who met at Columbia University, have clearly heard enough soukous and highlife to cop a few guitar licks to cloak their orch-pop pretensions, but almost by accident, the way their chamber strings are played over jaunty grooves makes for an engaging concoction, at least for a few spins.
60
Hot Press
Vampire Weekend certainly have one of the best band names I’ve heard in ages, although their music unfortunately proves less exciting than one might have hoped.
60
cokemachineglow
Fun and fresh enough on the first couple listens, it remains to be seen whether Vampire Weekend can find long-term favour with the listeners and critics so taken with them at present.
The average user rating for this album is 8.0 (out of 10) based on 132 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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