LSMedia or Liverpool student media at liverpoolstudentmedia.com is a brand new website launched by the University of Liverpool's students to promote and support talented Liverpool student's creative written, visual or radio content.

Much of the criticism levelled at Vampire Weekend after the release of their eponymous debut seemed to be from those personally offended by the bands well-educated,  preppy, middle-class, Manhattan background. Whilst many revelled in the up-tempo Afro-pop beats which punctuated Vampire Weekend, there were those refusing to buy in to what they perceived as kitsch and corny cultural theft. Contra sees the band ignoring such charges, embracing their quirks and eccentricities and making no apologies for it.

The accusations seem, mainly, to be borne out of jealousy rather than any justified arguments. Vampire Weekend may make no bones about being highly literate but there was no pomposity or haughtiness in that debut. On the contrary, Oxford Comma was a critique of the pedantic arrogance of private-school kids, yet many chose to focus on the word 'Oxford' and chastise them for being conceited.

The artwork of Contra, that polo-shirt clad, white, middle-class girl is likely to be zoomed in on in the same way, but an examination of their privileged background runs through the album, manifest in California English as a subte jibe at valley-girl superficiality. Taxi Cab describes the break-down of a relationship between an upper-class girl and the singer pulled from the wrong side of the tracks who is nostalgic for his simpler life whilst Cousins is a more disparaging take on the importance placed on ascribed status and bloodlines by rich families, paintings on the wall a substitute for any real experience of culture as they use their wealth to cut themselves off from the real world.

Vampire Weekend demonstrate on Holiday that they haven't lost the knack for short, punchy tunes but imbue the album with an emotional depth largely absent from that eponymous debut, most noticeably on closer I Think Ur a Contra. The penchant for Afro-pop is more pronounced, Ezra Koening's affected accent on Diplomat's Son and California English threatening to goad the usual detractors but Contra is no more cultural theft than Graceland-era Paul Simon. Vampire Weekend take Afro-beat as an influence rather than ripping it off to create an album which falls the right side of gimmicky twee and is utterly free of pretensions.

Released: January 8th 2010 (XL)