Buy This Album: Vampire Weekend

The only thing wrong with Vampire Weekend's full-length debut is that it came out about 2 months too early. This album radiates Springtime. It's got too much meat to be a throw-away summer record, but just enough pep, jangle, and worldly rhythm to make you long for the sun and short sleeve shirts.

Lucky for me it was sunny and in the 60s in Tulsa today so my purchase of Vampire Weekend's highly-anticipated self-titled release was quite appropriate and made driving with the windows down all the more sweeter.

Genre-busting innovation isn't at play here as much as genre-updating or even genre-perfecting. You've heard the sound of white-boy college rock mixed with African influences before in bands like The Talking Heads and a post-Garfunkle Paul Simon. It's been a while, though, and Vampire Weekend does a great job at making the sound fresh and fun again.

And don't get me wrong, there's more than just the world-rhythm influence at play here. You'll find lots of good pop rock jingles and all-around tight musicianship.

Try it if you like any of the following:

• The Talking Heads
• The Strokes
• rhythm sections
• listening to whole albums
  
• Spring Break
• Ivy-League New Yorkers
  
• references to Lil John
• references to Peter Gabriel
• doing the "white-boy shuffle" (must include biting your lip while dancing)
  

LINKS AND OTHER ODDS & ENDS

You can find Vampire Weekend on their website and their MySpace.

Find free legal downloads of an exclusive performance over at Daytrotter.

Watch their awesome exclusive performances on The Take-Away Shows.

Check out their guestlist on Pitchfork to find out what the band themselves are into.

Results for a Google image search of "Vampire Weekend at Bernies" can be found here.