So I streamed Contra last night and I kinda think it’s great.
It’s all about the drums and the skittish rhythms that seem to evoke a Graceland of the imagination while the lead singer puzzles in the post-grad. If you like the sound, if you like how it leads off the first album and back round on itself, you’re gonna love it. Me? I don’t have the slightest idea how you can’t love a song as good as “Cousins”: it kinda flips over the rhythm in the back like the train in the vid going back and forth. There’s a subdued joy to it (to so much of VE’s stuff).
Better is “California English Pt. 1” with its weird stutter of a sound is just as good. So is “Horchata” (did Jim Derogati’s miss it in his slam in the Chicago Sun-Times?).
As for Ezra’s lyric content being shallow. I have no idea what that means. Eza’s inner life is as important to him as anybody elses. If he lives in a world of privilege, is that shallow as such? I don’t have a handle on the lyric content as such but everything that’s caught my ear has sounded pretty good. maybe the balaclava rhyme is a bit naff but there is nothing terrible.
I’ll have more to say about the album once it’s released next week.