As we all hear Contra via web streams this week for the first time (hear it below at the bottom of the post), thoughts turn to how this album will translate live compared to their first album seeing as it lacks a teeny bit of the buoyancy. Pretty well by the looks of these live session videos. While Contra lacks the immediate sugar rush of the debut, it seems to be making up for it in depth. It’s still growing on me so time will tell how it stands up. Here are three new tracks from Contra performed live – ‘Holiday’, ‘Cousins’ and ‘Run’ with two well-known tracks from the first album for good measure.
‘Holiday’
‘Cousins’
‘Run’
‘Oxford Comma’
‘A-Punk’

Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005 . He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, club promoter, event curator and producer of gigs, listening parties & events in Dublin.
Vampire Weekend is a pretty good band, but I liked their first album better than the new one. Cousins is pretty catchy though.
really enjoying giving up the gun 🙂
its a grower of an album allright ,ive warmed to it in the space of a week after not really liking it at all. its a step forward which is always good ,few nods to the first album and its , “”sound””. its more grown up…but only just.
intresting to see how much influence animal collectives merriweather post pavillion has had on the guys its fairly blatant at times.
First 2 videos seem to be down.
Working fine for me.
Ah right, its working now. I was online in college but am at home now and its good
XX T-shirt! 😀
the vocals on “holiday” (the session video) sound pretty weak.
I like the drummer a lot tho.