Vampire Weekend’s latest effort, Modern Vampires of the City, is very strange. Vampire Weekend are renowned for their preppy, peppy afro-pop records, but on this, their third album, they’ve done something a bit different. The first track alone is enough to spell out the difference. ‘Obvious Bicycle’ is a slow, sparse number, with subtle piano work and choral vocals. It sounds like something that Fleet Foxes might have recorded in a contemplative moment.
The record as a whole is more chilled out than their past hyperactive selves. Where the music is fast, it is less self-consciously jerky and more anthemic. Where it is slow, it often employs piano or organ to provide a gently undulating backdrop to the wonderfully wordy lyrics (“stale conversation deserves but a breadknife”). ‘Don’t Lie’ is a case in point, with the quiet thump of drums submerged under layers of harmonies, all singing a refrain of “Listen, don’t wait”. If it wasn’t Vampire Weekend on the album cover, you could be forgiven for thinking this was an off-cut from Beirut’s The Rip Tide.
The lead single, ‘Diane Young’, is a bit of a return to form: an upbeat, quirky jaunt of a song, with a catchy chorus. If your summer isn’t spent singing “baby, baby, baby, baby, right on time”, you have no appreciation for the simplicity and brilliance of nonsense lyrics.
Perhaps the only real problem with the record is VW’s obsession with pitch shifting Ezra Koenig’s voice. He has a wonderful soulful croon (showcased at its best in ‘Unbelievers’). It seems a shame to mess with it simply as a stylistic device. The second single, ‘Ya Hey’, is practically unlistenable as a result. This can probably be forgiven though, on the basis of all that is so very right with this album.
All in all, this is a good record, but a departure from past form. It’s unsettling to hear Vampire Weekend doing something so unlike their past work. However, as long as they remain the literate, sensitive pop-minstrels they’ve always been, that is no bad thing.
Track to download: Diane Young
