Vampire Weekend finding success by mixing contrasting musical elements

His band often sounds like a dozen different things going on all at once, the art rock equivalent of an iPod stuck on shuffle.

Chris Tomson equates it to the ability to eat both plants and animals for sustenance.

"One thing that really brought us together is that we're each musical omnivores," says the drummer of New York City's worldbeat-influenced Vampire Weekend. "Some people define their music tastes by very strict genre lines, and I think that our approach to music was much more of a hybrid look.

"We liked everything," he adds. "We were psyched when we heard an African pop song. Rostam (Batmnanglij, multi-instrumentalist) really likes Coldplay. Whatever, you know? I think that's something that we found as a common thread, that we had open ears to music and were kind of willing to get down with whatever."

Whatever.

That's kind of what it boils down to for a band that's hard to boil down into anything.

Vampire Weekend's sophomore effort, "Contra," released in January, is a spry, lively pastiche of varied influences, from Afro-pop rhythms and melodies to indie rock introspection to the warmth of '60s psychedelia, a seemingly heterogeneous mix that band has dubbed "Upper West Side Soweto."

Somehow, it's both urbane and earthy at once, equally heady and breezy. Paul Simon's "Graceland" is an oft-cited reference point when it comes to this bunch, and it seems like a fair starting point, with frontman Ezra Koenig's soft-scrubbed vocals and literary, self-aware lyrics set against a pan-global backdrop of shape-shifting sounds.

If it all sounds a bit incongruous on paper, it doesn't on wax.

"We know that we have a lot of disparate sounds that are coming in," Tomson says, "but at the same time, we want to make sure that it sounds like a whole song and not a bunch of different parts stuck together."

As Tomson alludes to, there is a cohesion that holds it all together for Vampire Weekend, a sort of musical symmetry amongst its many different, fast-moving parts.

On "Contra," the band sounds more confident in striking this balance between contrasting elements, as the disc is both immediate and textured at once.

"I think the biggest change from the first to the second album was just the fact that we were a full-time band," Tomson says. "The first album was recorded, for the most part, after work or on weekends and in apartments, just kind of fitting it in when we could.

"This time, it was more of a thing where we could start an album," he continues. "I think the main thing was for us to feel like we weren't repeating ourselves. The goal was to keep it fresh, try new things, new sounds, new approaches to songwriting."

This they've done, to increasing dividends.

"Contra" debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, as Vampire Weekend has managed to build on its early buzz band status.

On the band's current tour, they've played a three-night stand at New York City's Radio City Music Hall and graduated to amphitheaters in some markets.

Tomson says that little of it has really sunken in yet.

The band's been too busy recording and hitting the road for its members to take much stock in what they've so far achieved.

Tomson does remember one key date though: the day he was able to quit his job and become a musician full time.

Reflecting on that day, he still sounds a little incredulous, like he's speaking about someone else, as if his life has been flying by right along with the scenery outside the tour bus window.

"My last day of work was July 3, 2007, and our first tour date was July 6, so there wasn't too much time to soak it in," he recalls ruminating on his band's success. "When people that we didn't know really started coming to our shows. I remember thinking, 'That's strange. It's cool that people are into us and are excited enough that they want to come see us play.' Really, since then, it's all kind of been slight variations on that same feeling. Whether it's 20 strangers or 5,000 strangers, it's all people who are, conceptually, very oddly paying to see you play music."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.