It was so lovely out yesterday, and it’s so bloody nice today I thought I really would have to post some irrepressibly cheerful music out of sheer contentment. The problem is, as an unrepentant indie sulk-merchant, your overly serious and hyper-sensitive Toad poked through the old record collection (haha – what nonsense – scrolled through my hard drive more like it, but it just doesn’t sound as good, does it!) and wondered what my musical heroes had to offer. So I went through the likes of Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Billy Bragg, Eels, The Willard Grant Conspiracy, Wilco, Andrew Bird, Grandaddy, erm, Lloyd Cole… er, right. Well not a lot of cheerful Sunday music there really. In fact, barely any happy music at all, and when there is any it tends to be their weaker songs too.

So I turned to the soaring connections of the interglobalsupermegahivemindweb-o-rama that are the internets and found, courtesy of Good Weather For Air Strikes, a bunch of Cape Coddahs called Vampire Weekend who are perfect. For the Brits, that’s ‘Cape Codders’ spelled phonetically in the accent of the region – there are entire industries out in that part of Massachusetts devoted entirely to the manufacture of t-shirts with Pahk the Cah in HahvardYahd written on them. Oh the, erm, jollity.

Vampire Weekend don’t really scream Cape Cod to me somehow. I associate that part of the world more with the solitary introspection of Willy Mason or the ramshackle populism of bar bands playing Sweet Caroline in the Woodshed, but these guys play a sort of cheerful calypso pop that, although not aggressively upbeat, has a sort of uplifting cheeriness to it that I fell for somewhat by stealth.

Seriously, Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa sounds like it should be the only decent song on Paul Simon’s Rhythm of the Saints at times, and the looping electronic beepery on Walcott really should put someone like me off. But it doesn’t.

Go to their site as there’s one more track to download there, and you can order a couple of CD-Rs. Insert into record player, assemble those requiring cheering up around you, activate sway-o-meter and enjoy with cocktails.

Vampire Weekend – Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
Vampire Weekend – Walcott (Insane Mix #2)

website | myspace