The first spins of Vampire Weekend’s third full-length album are more than a little overwhelming.
There’s so much going on over the length of “Modern Vampires of the City” it’s easy to feel lost on first listen. It’s like stepping off the subway and walking through the busiest stretches of the quartet’s native New York City at rush hour. The noises, words and spectacles come from all corners, all at once, with no consideration for right-of-way. The album is a dense musical statement, one that’s constantly buzzing with energy and that never takes a break from experimentation.
Somehow Vampire Weekend makes that musical chaos endearing on “Modern Vampires,” a record that manages to simultaneously feel more unhinged and more mature than the quartet’s first two records. Lead vocalist and guitarist Ezra Koenig offers listeners a new degree of lyrical maturity and poetic strength across the 12 songs. Keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij, drummer Chris Tomson and bassist Chris Baio manage to reinvent the formula behind the band’s pioneering work in the synthpop genre. The album moves in fresh musical directions and expands on the cues that have influenced bands like Passion Pit and the Dirty Projectors.
Most impressively, the album offers a grittiness and earnestness that defies the blatantly unfair criticisms that came with the group’s first two albums. The claims that Vampire Weekend’s sound suffered from the band’s privileged background as Columbia University grads are roundly deflated here. Sure, there are clear signs of the group’s collective intelligence, of the brainy perks of an Ivy League education and the traces of countless upper-level English classes.
But those book smarts come along with an energy that’s unadorned rock and roll at its heart. The music includes nods to African drumming and garage rock. Batmanglij finds eerie tones and voices on his keyboard, and Koenig’s vocal stylings range from heartfelt balladry to frenzied rounds of rhymes that could easily fit into a hip-hop framework.
Those touches make the music shine in a way that doesn’t feel overly polished or unduly derailed by money, learning or the trappings of high society.
The wide array of musical cues and contours on the record’s 12 tracks is one of its greatest strengths. Highlights include the grandiose instrumental breaks on “Unbelievers,” the harpsichord fills on the tender, nostalgic “Step,” the eerie, frenetic rhythms on “Diane Young” and the dreamy, exploratory pace of “Hudson.”
But the rich sound tapestry streamlined by producers Batmanglij and Ariel Rechsthaid is only part of the sensory overload here. True to the patterns staked out on the band’s self-titled debut from 2008 and 2010’s “Contra,” the songs on “Modern Vampires of the City” offer dense and dizzying lyrical experiments. Lead vocalist, guitarist and part-time middle school English teacher Koenig once again shows off a prowess for language honed with his bandmates at Columbia. He also revives his skill for weaving together imagery from current pop culture, literature and history. His poetic asides are just as ambitious as the music.
Take “Worship You,” for example. Koenig’s words come at a dizzying pace, and it’s tough to discern the vaguely patriotic, vaguely disillusioned words. “Your red white hand/won’t we see once again,” Koenig cries at breakneck speed, “In foreign soil, in foreign land/who will guide us through the end?” On “Ya Hey,” Koenig claims that “Oh sweet thing, Zion doesn’t love you/Babylon don’t love you.” On “Diane Young,” he insists, “But you got the luck of a Kennedy/So grab the wheel and keep holding it tight,” even as the pitch of his voice veers up and down.
Even the references to biblical Zion and the colored family history of the Kennedys don’t make the titles feel lofty or snobby. These are high-minded poetic twists on otherwise visceral tracks, and they’re more seamless and well integrated than any of the band’s past work.
Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com or 720-449-9707