Vampire Weekend’s dizzying love letter to New York serves plenty of surprises

If his last outing was in part inspired by his adopted home of Los Angeles, this one is very much Koenig’s love letter to his native New York. But it feels like a band album proper and a lean collection running to 47 minutes that embrace a dizzying collection of styles, genres and influences. Lesser bands would suffer from this everything but the kitchen sink approach, not Vampire Weekend. What has been clear since they first emerged in the late 2000s, this is a group who take all manner of world music influences and make them their own.

That said, the Afrobeat that characterised the band’s early sound has largely been supplanted by hip-hop elements and the sort of indie that was commonplace when the band released their debut album. A handful of tracks sound remarkably like the Strokes, including Gen-X Cops. But there’s plenty of surprises too — Mary Boone, which is named after a disgraced New York art dealer who dubbed herself “the Martha Stewart of the art world”, is indebted to Indian raga.

As ever with Koenig, the lyrics are hyper literate and full of allusion. He’s a songwriter who abhors the prosaic and on the eight-minute closer, Hope, his wordsmith qualities are given free range with a sonic backdrop that is rarely less than delightful and doesn’t outstay its welcome.

The latest album from Khruangbin doesn’t outstay its welcome either. The Texan trio, whose band name is Thai for aeroplane, are sometimes dismissed as purveyors of background music. Granted, their genre-hopping instrumentals work well in such a context, but that’s to ignore the beauty and innovation that characterises their sound.

This is a band who have been inspired by all manner of world music, with influences from Iranian rock to calypso to vintage psychedelia, and they meld the various styles and genres with considerable panache.

A La Sala — Spanish for ‘in the room’ — is their fourth album and the most chilled to date. As before, a handful of songs have snatches of vocals, but they’re part of the rich sonic stew rather than foregrounded. It’s not what they’re saying, it’s the mood evoked that has made Khruangbin such an appealing proposition and that’s certainly the case on this gorgeously honed album.

There are echoes of other artists including Fleetwood Mac, circa Albatross, and Beach House when they first emerged, but Laura Lee — aka Leezy — and friends retain their own distinct soulful and atmospheric sound. There’s a steady tempo for most of the album, but here and there — not least on Pon Pón — they embrace the dance-floor.