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Zero 7
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed albums.
Vampire Weekend
Universal acclaim
Based on 38 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 135 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album >
Album Info
Label: XL
Release Date: 29 January 2008
Discs: 1 disc
Genre(s): Rock, Indie
Summary
This is the debut album for the quartet of Columbia University alumni.
Also On The Web: Official Artist Site
What The Critics Said
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...
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.
Read Full Review >Paste Magazine
This cosmopolitan quartet has streamlined ska, post-punk, chamber music and Afropop into a glorious ultramodern groove.
Read Full Review >Delusions of Adequacy
This is a magnificent debut, filled with endless melodies, memorable hooks and plenty of toe-tapping moments.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Under The Radar
This is likely to be the most fun release of the year. [Winter 2008, p.84]
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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Prefix Magazine
Vampire Weekend’s debut comes across as a confident, precise, and, for better and worse, mature collection.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >musicOMH.com
In places almost carnivalesque, this is a good times album that celebrates positive aspects of the world.
Read Full Review >Billboard
Listeners are only too lucky to get a hot breath of summer fun in these cold winter months.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Hartford Courant
It’s ecstatic music, surely; and intense, too, even as it’s joyful.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Spin
Vampire Weekend have made a truely fresh, fun, and smart record. [Feb 2008, p.91]
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Vibe
Vampire Weekend have suceeded in putting the hips back in hipster. [Mar 2008, p.98]
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]
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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Uncut
Cosmopolitan, anglophile, afrobeat--Vampire Weekend are in an Ivy League of their own.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >No Ripcord
Vampire Weekend is indie rock with its edges sanded off, polished to a clean, sparkling sheen.
Read Full Review >Alternative Press
Thier debut album is one of the most inventive in recent memory. [Apr 2008, p.153]
Sputnikmusic
Vampire Weekend banks on showering its tribal pop with lyrics poised for literary analysis, skimping pretentious by appearing completely natural.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Dusted Magazine
Vampire Weekend is an exemplar of contemporary establishment indie rock, sandblasted clean but striking a dirty pose nonetheless.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this album is 8.0 (out of 10) based on 135 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Jonathan S. gave it a10:
This is the most original album I have ever heard in my life! This is a must get for any cool kids out there. Imagine living in an house, looking over the beach, beautiful blue sky and crystal blue water. You have a metal spiral staircase and hard wood floors. You have amazing floor-ceiling glass windows overlooking the wispy sand of the East Coast. You have a golden retriever curled up on your white carpet, near the flat panel hung on the wall and the modern simple den. It is a studio apartment, one would say its a dream. As you walk through the studio, from the white simple den to the porch level with the sandy ground, you hear a sound so wonderful it complements the apartment, white and modern. Thats Vampire Weekend.
Evil Ed gave it a7:
Lets not get carried away here. There are some good songs on this album but there not THAT good.
Ryan S gave it a9:
Love this album so much. Original and exciting music in my opinion. I listened to the whole album in one go at first and instantly felt connected to them.
Diego C. gave it a9:
Can't stop listening to this album. Vampire Weekend is the best album of 2008. Period.
Jim H gave it a9:
It remains to be ssen whether cokemachineglow is too obsessively hipper-than-thou and deserves the long-term favour it seems to have with metacritic's rating system.
Ryan M. gave it a10:
It's been months and months since I first heard this album. Still, to this day, I always find myself coming back for a listen. I greatly enjoy music and the lyrics. I personally think this is a very talented band with an impressive debut album.
Ashley M. gave it a5:
There has been a lot of backlash on this album recently and I think that is because its something that people latched onto for its cute factor, I cite Juno and its soundtrack as a precedent. Regardless of this fact Vampire Weekend's first album is a solid effort but lacks originality. This music is fresh in the respect that its different than most neo post-punk flooding the radio market nowadays, but to me it sounds extremely derivative of Paul Simon's Graceland album and later world beat era Talking Heads. There sound is warmed over amalgam of these things.
