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I mentioned via Twitter last week that the new Vampire Weekend album is either really good or really bad. I had just gotten the album, and listening to it for the first time, my thought was that over time, some of the off-putting tracks might grow on me.

A week later, I can safely declare that the new Vampire Weekend album is pretty good and pretty bad.

Tracks like “Mansard Roof”, “Oxford Comma”, “Walcott”, and the “The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance” are some of the more inspired indie-pop I’ve heard in recent years. At the other end of the spectrum, “A-Punk” is an entirely unnecessary exercise in warmed-over 2-Tone ska, while “M79″‘s early-80′s Casio keyboard is enough to send me lunging for the skip button.

In between are a handful of generally forgettable songs, most sounding like attempts to recreate various aspects of Paul Simon’s Graceland.

If this review is sounds harsh, it is due to the expectations created by the the album’s high points. The good songs I listed above really are quite good. In the end, these tracks make Vampire Weekend worth purchasing. However, I find myself wondering if perhaps the band would have been better off going with an EP rather than a full-length release.