For anyone enamored with the Manhattanite guitar raga of Vampire Weekend’s debut LP, the affected dance-inclinations and lyrical pensiveness of follow-up Contra was probably at least somewhat disappointing. Vampire Weekend are pressing on in terms of their commitment to house beats and their neglect of snappy guitar playing, but the emotional evocation present in the lyrics has never been more profound than on “Ya Hey.” “Ya Hey” deals with the complexities, both social and personal, of developing a relationship with the idea of god (or so I think – Ezra Koenig’s muddled refrain does kind of sound like “Yaweh”), though this is smartly bent in all sorts of ways by Koenig’s lyrical privilege The lyric video (Vampire Weekend’s second to be released in promotion of their upcoming Modern Vampires of the City) features slow-motion shots of people solemnly wasting champagne: a very typical stereotype of what it means to be “upper crust” is transformed into something darkly ceremonial – even religious.
