In advance of attending their show tonight at the Sony Centre, I felt compelled to reaffirm the greatness of Vampire Weekend, and specifically of their third album, Modern Vampires of the City.
The album has been met with what people who track this sort of thing call “universal acclaim”. It is full of heart and complex lyrical ideas; it is both bigger than anything they’ve made and also somehow more intimate, cheekier and more clever yet also more quiet reflective.
It may not radiate with the blind enthusiasm of their first disc, and Contra is likely to remain the most “Vampire Weekend-y” album they will ever make, Modern Vampires is a categorical success precisely because it stands on the shoulders of those two releases and then confidently expands to stake its own claim as the best work they have ever done. This is a truly wonderful record. Reviewers smarter than I seem to think so as well…
Via Pitchfork
Along with the more lived-in sonics, Modern Vampires has the band taking a leap forward into emotional directness. Koenig and Batmanglij truly seem of one mind here, as the vocals and music interact with each other in an effortless flow.
Nothing feels out-of-place or out-of-sync, everything clicks together in flourishes of simple brilliance.
Via The A.V. Club
As a capstone to what it’s done so far, Modern Vampires Of The City feels pretty perfect.
Via Rolling Stone
Vampire Weekend have gotten better at just about everything they do.
Time, life, death, religion, New York City, and New York money are big topics to tackle in a 45 minute pop album, and Modern Vampires doesn’t even attempt answers to the questions it raises. Instead, it’s content to expound upon the Vampire Weekend aesthetic in inventive, imaginative, and undeniably successful ways
Via Drowned In Sound
The new record by Vampire Weekend is the best alternative pop album you will hear this year. Unselfconscious, technically brilliant in a way that crucially you will never actually notice, shimmering with beautiful, strange melodies and just a small smidge of actual bonkers.
You get the idea. This is a brave, surprising, and confident album from a band that continues to elevate their own ceiling as artists.
In my potentially-biased-but-always-earnest opinion, with Modern Vampires, they have given us the early clubhouse leader for Album of the Year. Anyone else dropping in 2013 – Kanye, Daft Punk, The National, anyone – is now playing catch-up.
Low Culture, High Concept 