Spoon Declare War On Melody

It's a good thing when bands don't stick to the same formula over and over again. There's nothing worse than stale music. However, Spoon has managed to change the formula and make an overall flat-sounding album, Transference, at the same time.

"Before Destruction" is a raw song that has a demo-like quality. The sound is far away and consists mostly of Britt Daniel's rasping vocals and jagged acoustic guitar strumming.

"Is Love Forever" takes a page from The Strokes' guitar playing book with a bouncy and punchy but ultimately boring riff. Too much robotic factory precision. The most interesting part of the song is the psychedelic reverb on the vocals.

"The Mystery Zone," musically at least, sounds a lot like the funked-up mid-'70s "Miss You" Rolling Stones. An intricate bass line anchors the song and the guitar and keyboard echo play off that.

"Written In Reverse" is one of the better songs on the album and surprise, surprise it's the current radio single. The rhythm here isn't too geometric and this allows some of the raw soul elements that have always been part of Spoon to come back. The percussive piano and Daniel's impassioned vocals help as well.

"Goodnight Laura" is a melancholy piano lullaby. This may be the only song on the album that's pure melody instead of pure rhythm. This song is somewhat reminiscent of live solo piano performances from Neil Young.

"Got Nuffin" came out last year as a radio single and on a lackluster EP of the same name. The song itself has an enjoyable slow burning guitar riff. In hindsight, this is somewhat of a precursor to the sonic approach this whole album takes but it doesn't quite go off cliff like other songs.

"Nobody Gets Me But You" is almost electronica. The drums are definitely "enhanced" and the only other prominent instrumentation is a funk-like bass riff.

While not without its bright spots, Transference definitely favors rhythm at the expense of melody. Good music needs both or you end up with the cold results the majority of this album ends up with.

Contra Proves An Unsuccessful New Direction For Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend exploded onto the indie rock scene two years ago with an appealingly organic, world music tinged sound with an Ivy League sensibility. Nobody had managed to capture that sound before besides perhaps Paul Simon. The band has attempted an about face on their highly-awaited sophomore album Contra. But the experimentation doesn't pay off.

"Horchata" has atmospheric vocals from singer/guitarist Ezra Koenig. Besides the marimba, everything else, like engine piston drumming and synth strings and choir, seems affected by overblown studio wizardry. This approach sets the tone for the whole album, reminiscent of solo Sting or Paul Simon as produced by Brian Eno.

"Holiday" and "Cousins" are perhaps the only two songs on the album that have prominent guitar throughout. The former has a ping-pong rhythm and the latter pummels along at a breakneck speed, which sounds like more studio magic.

Taking a cue from King Sunny Ade, "California English" has some interesting juju guitar leads undercut by jagged rhythm tracks. Koenig affects a stupid "ethnic" accent for portions.

The final song on the album, "I Think Ur A Contra" is an incredibly dreamy affair. A wave-like mix of keyboards and guitar harmonics washes over the listener.

Vampire Weekend's keyboardist, Rostam Batmanlij, produced Contra and it definitely shows. Too much in fact. It sounds as if the rest of the band had barely any contribution at all, just letting Batmanlij fart around. The problem with synth-heavy music in general is that it can end up sounding a combination of thin, cold, soulless and robotic. This, coupled with the lack of variety in instrumentation, hurts Contra. Vampire Weekend is a full band and it's a shame they don't sound like one here.