Most Likely to Win the Contest of Winning

Vampire Weekend’s album wins the following contests:

• Most likely to be awesome driving music on a clear fall day.
• Most super-fun, intriguing lyrics. “Mansard Roof” and “Oxford Comma” kill it.
• Best at whoring itself for product marketing.
• Most likely to blow over, a fad been had.
• This bullet is not a contest, just a statement: I think the album loses some steam in the middle-ish tracks: “M79,” “Campus,” “Bryn.”

Low’s album wins the following contests:

• Most likely to turn off potential listeners with its opening track. (I like Low, and have been listening to them on and off for more than a decade, but “Pretty People” reminded me of what I like least in Low: over-dramatic accusations; glumness so glummy it makes me giggle, like I do when I see a gothed-out tween.)
• Most likely to inspire insensitive jokes about what an actual Sandinista would make of the song “Sandinista.” Okay, so I didn’t like this song either. Or “Your Poison,” for the glumness described in bullet the first.
• Most likely to surprise me. I was expecting to be over Low, to dismiss them as one trick pony (knowing better, but hoping for an easy call). Holy crap, though: “Belarus” and “Breaker” wow me.

So the anti-commercialist crab in me says go with Low. The clever will always be with us. But the trying-to-be-less-dour side of me says go with Vampire Weekend.

Oh. I just came up with a way to make this easier: Which album is has the most tracks I’d routinely skip out of annoyance? Definitely, not even most likely: Low’s Drums and Guns.

Vampire Weekend is most likely to win.