Vampire Weekend

Modern Vampires of the City

It may not meet the high standards of Contra, but these new songs come pretty close, which is no small feat. And they may even convert a few non-believers along the way.

Modern Vampires of the City finds the band in both familiar and unfamiliar territory, and it’s pure pleasure hearing them navigate these waters.

Their erudition, musical and lyrical, remains a pleasure, but what convinces on Modern Vampires are their beating hearts.

Nothing seems off-limits, and yet it gels, thanks in part to constant melodic inventiveness and singer Ezra Koenig's refreshingly nerdy wordplay, which at times is as intricate and descriptive as hip-hop and elsewhere simple and tantalizingly elusive.

The album is both more mature and personal than anything they've done previously, providing a ruminative, thoughtful take on love and death seen through the prism of temporality

It’s time to start thinking of Vampire Weekend not as upstarts but as one of the world’s best bands

On their third full-length, Modern Vampires Of The City, Vampire Weekend feel like a band in transition, dealing with their own mortality, and looking to trade in their sun-bleached, pigeonholed world-pop for something with teeth.

This album is as life-affirming a piece of music as anything else you’ll hear this year: there’s nothing more uplifting than a good band getting better.

Unlike Vampire Weekend and Contra, there is a less of an emphasis on inventive takes of differing genres. The group here instead aims at a core style—best described as “old with the new”—that spins off in divergent directions.

Like art, Vampires is dense; like pop, it seems to float in effortlessly from some place you're sure you've been, but by some trick of déjà vu eludes your conscious brain.

Whilst it isn't the sound of a band who have shed their skin or exposed a dark underbelly, Modern Vampires Of The City is perhaps their most accomplished profusion of hooks to date.

The different use of instrument and percussion in Modern Vampires Of The City give Vampire Weekend a striking sound, different from many of their contemporaries. Yep, they’re still ahead of the game.

The record’s better executed moments (‘Unbelievers’, ‘Ya Hey’) are widescreen and epic; adjectives one would never have associated with Vampire Weekend’s first two albums

Koenig is engaged with the world in a serious way that doesn’t preclude fun or playfulness. And even as the band’s sound has evolved, the music remains immaculately crafted and distinctively its own. 

Though ‘Modern Vampires Of The City’ is flawed – there’s no stand-out single, and the low-key ‘Obvious Bicycle’ is far too sombre to justify its billing as the opening track – repeat listens to this third act are rewarded.

Vampire Weekend's latest album is a worth sequel to 2010's Contra, presenting songs that truly stand on the merits of their memorable writing and lush instrumentation.

This is a gorgeous album, but sacrifices had to be made. They’ve undeniably lost something that made them special in the first place.

Modern Vampires of the City contains something no other Vampire Weekend album has—boring songs. Trilogies don't often end well, and while there's more good than bad, it's still disappointing when listeners know what could have been. 

It’s safe to say that, at this point, what Vampire Weekend has to say with Modern Vampires of the City is relevant and tired all the same. It’s an honest delivery, but they are essentially preaching to the choir.

While MVOTC doesn’t represent a seismic leap from their earlier material, the general feeling is of a much more considered collection, with greater emphasis on song craft.

Experimentation is generally to be applauded, but too often here it works to the detriment of the songs.

It’s really too bad, then, that Modern Vampires couldn’t have been a more interesting--or easily definable--failure. As it stands, it’s just another Vampire Weekend album, except the songs are less catchy and more sterile this time around.