Vampire Weekend

Since 2006 · United States

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Modern Vampires of the City (2013)

Modern Vampires of the City trades Vampire Weekend's earlier bright, preppy energy for denser, more atmospheric songwriting about mortality and faith. "Step" rides a harpsichord-sampling melody and a lyric steeped in specific, autobiographical detail into one of the band's most emotionally direct songs, the arrangement's warmth sitting against genuinely weighty subject matter. Ezra Koenig's literate, referential lyrics stay intact even as the mood turns considerably more serious. It remains the album most responsible for establishing the band as a genuinely evolving songwriting project rather than a one-note stylistic debut.

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Vampire Weekend

Modern Vampires of the City · 2013

Vampire Weekend formed at Columbia University around Ezra Koenig, building an early sound that layered African guitar-pop rhythms and classical touches from bandmate Rostam Batmanglij over concise, literate indie rock songwriting. Despite frequent critical comparisons to American indie contemporaries, Koenig has been direct about his most emphatic actual influences: English new wave and post-punk songwriters — Squeeze, Elvis Costello, and XTC specifically — telling interviewers there always was an English strain running through the band's music, and that, in his own words, "the basis of our whole band is not playing modern rock."

Modern Vampires of the City (2013) marked a deliberate turn toward darker, more contemplative songwriting, trading some of the band's earlier preppy brightness for meditations on mortality, faith, and adulthood set against denser, more atmospheric production. The album became the record most widely credited with establishing Vampire Weekend as a serious, evolving songwriting project rather than a stylish debut act, and its combination of formal ambition and genuine emotional weight expanded the band's critical standing considerably.