Vampire Weekend had a busy 2010. Contra, their sophomore full-length, went to No. 1 on the Billboard charts. They were nominated for a Grammy. They returned to Saturday Night Live and sold out a handful of dates at Radio City Music Hall on the same New York block a few months later. They attracted legal ire for their album cover, toured as far from home as Indonesia and Singapore, and sat pretty on several year-end best-of lists. After spending a few years as a nascent young band that could spark conversational firestorms on topics as wide-ranging as boat shoes and 21st-century colonialism, they solidified their brand in 2010 as a band whose willingness to write a big pop song was buttressed in full by the fact that they could and wanted to do it very thoughtfully. They’ve become polished pros, plain and simple.
Four days before Christmas, they capped their year by quietly releasing an iTunes Session EP, recorded in September, replete with new, brass-bolstered arrangements: two covers and four singles, one of which, “Holiday,” was given a well-humidified rocksteady treatment. The exclusive iTunes price tag can be a bummer, though given how much they’ve grown as a live band, the great appeal here lies in having high-quality recordings of Vampire Weekend interacting in a room together, playing songs in ways you wouldn’t normally hear.
That said, every cut sparkles, especially those pulled from the band’s debut. “A-Punk” is a toothsome opener, multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij pairing his chorus synths with horns that fit cleanly in an already/expectedly tidy mix. Chris Baio’s bass sounds ripe, Chris Tomson’s drumwork smart. And as one might expect, those horns sound more stately than brash, the latter quality smartly saved for the madcap torque of “Cousins,” where they actually sound as though they had been there all along. And in its form here, “Holiday” takes on a refreshingly, (almost deceptively) languid quality that’s a far cry from the chug of the original.
Vampire Weekend have always boasted a good ear for covers, and the pair included here are worthy individual additions to an iTunes library. Video and MP3s of the band taking on Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 sleeper “I’m Going Down” have circulated online over the past few months, though this relatively minimal rendition is by far the strongest. Backed at first by just hushed keys and handclaps, Ezra Koenig’s feathered delivery doesn’t bring the boom like the Boss’ does, but it has a soulful, backseat feel that does the song very well. Same goes for their take on the Honeycombs’ jangly “Have I the Right,” a serenade from 1964 that finds Koenig belting and Batmanglij getting cheeky/improvisational on piano, with horns and sax in bloom at their side. It’s not often you hear this band playing off-script, but the result still pops.
