Second albums are tough.

The concept of the sophomore slump is particularly valid in the music world, where many a promising debut is followed by something head-scratching or, worse, boring.

Often the artist spent years building up to the first release, honing the perfect batch of songs into something meaningful and thought out. And once the debut is a hit, pressure comes from the label (not to mention fans) to put out something else right away. So the result is a hastily thrown together group of songs, often chronicling the experience of fame itself, something nobody really cares to hear about.

You also have the pitfall of releasing a second album that hews too closely to the first and is dismissed as a retread; or the opposite, an album that’s so removed from what made the debut special that it may as well be by a different act altogether.

Yes, second albums are tough. Which is why it’s all the more remarkable that Vampire Weekend has released the perfect second album.

I’m not suggesting that Contra in itself is perfect. But in terms of how it both echoes and builds on their eponymous debut, it couldn’t be a better continuation of their career. It is the very opposite of a sophomore slump.

In Rolling Stone‘s review of Contra, the writer draws an analogy between Vampire Weekend and filmmaker Wes Anderson — the debut album is their Rushmore and Contra is their Royal Tenenbaums (never mind that the exercise ignores Anderson’s first film, Bottle Rocket). Having compared the band to Anderson myself a year ago, I find the comparison spot-on. And I suspect the band embraces the connection (which I’ve since seen in many other places), as evidenced by their use of the Futura font (an Anderson staple) and the obvious debt to his work in an early video.

Like Wes Anderson — and like most great things — Vampire Weekend seems to be loved and loathed in equal measure. Both share an air of white-bread privilege and a twee sensibility that rubs many people the wrong way. If lead singer/songwriter Ezra Koenig’s Polo shirts annoy you, chances are you’ll find his music equally obnoxious.

But Koenig knows this, and he doesn’t apologize for it. The cover art of Contra, a photo of a Polo-clad WASP-y blonde with a blank look on her face, is a shot across the bow of anybody who expected or wanted this band to become something else. If you didn’t buy into hyper-literate Upper West Side preppies who blend African influences with baroque chamber pop a couple of years ago, then move along, there’s nothing to see here.

But if, like me, you bought into it big-time, you’re in for a treat.

Yes, this is more of the same, but it’s also different in interesting and surprising ways. I never expected Vampire Weekend to record an entire song using Auto-Tune, for example, as they do in the frenetic ‘California English.’ And if you suggested that Vampire Weekend would sample M.I.A. before she sampled them, I wouldn’t have taken that bet. But they do, in the 6-minute ‘Diplomat’s Son.’ And the closing song, ‘I Think UR a Contra,’ is the band’s most experimental work yet, trading their easy melodies for a moody, dissonant piano and orchestra soundscape and Koenig’s aching falsetto.

That song also marks a lyrical departure for Koenig, who rarely writes about matters of the heart. While most of the song is a bit abstract, the opening lines sketch out a dissolving relationship: “I had a feeling once that you and I could tell each other everything… for two months.”

‘Taxi Cab,’ possibly my favorite track on the album, is another chronicle of a love affair. Over layers of bass, strings and harpsichord, Koenig sings about a relationship between two people from different classes. He reminisces about their time together, singing “you were standing this close to me, like the future was supposed to be, in the aisles of the grocery and the blocks up-town.”

Other highlights include ‘White Sky,’ a Manhattan travelogue that owes more to Paul Simon’s Graceland than maybe anything else Vampire Weekend has done and boasts a chorus of delirious squeals that will stick with you for hours; ‘Run,’ which reminds me in parts of Depeche Mode or some other electronic 80s band and contains the great line “We mostly work to live, until we live to work”‘; and ‘Cousins,’ an addictive, frantic tune that seems to have been recorded in triple time.

Really, though, every song on the album is excellent. My one complaint is that the record is a bit short at ten tracks, but there is definitely something to be said for leaving them wanting more. Vampire Weekend does that here in spades. They’ve shattered the curse of the second album and I’m already impatient for the third.