328. Vampire Weekend, "Modern Vampires of the City"

 


Vampire Weekend is maybe the last of the Hipster Bands, back when "hipster" as a term had the power to divide and anger, which seems absolutely quaint now in light of four years of True Life: The Madness of King Donald and Worldwide Pandemic and Oh Hey Here's Another Recession Just In Case You Forgot About the Last One Like 10 Years Ago.  Hard to care about whether American Apparel opens a store in your neighborhood when breathing can kill you.

So in their early years they were almost shorthand for white, overeducatred, appropriative, bratty kids except they also managed to make fun, inventive, exciting music.  On this, their third album, they look ahead from the arch observations and class signifiers of college kids on the quad and spring into young adulthood.  I liked this album a lot from the day it came out and we listened to it a lot in our house, so I'm not an unbiased observer here.

Vampire Weekend The Early Years was always built on the interplay between frontman Ezra Koenig and multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij, and this would be Rostam's last album with the band.  And what an album it is.  There's a lot of more introspective, adult (for lack of a better word) stuff here, a lot of themes of growing older and a lot of religion, or lack thereof.  The second track, "Unbelievers," seems to be about how atheists can feel adrift in a spiritual world:

Got a little soul
The world is a cold, cold place to be
Want a little warmth
But who's going to save a little warmth for me?

We know the fire awaits unbelievers
All of the sinners the same
Girl, you and I will die unbelievers
Bound to the tracks of the train

And the band leaves behind their signature African-pop-meets-Whit-Stillman-film sound and attitude.  One song in particular, "Step," surely one of the album's highlights, is based on the Oakland hip hop group Souls of Mischief's song "Step to my Girl."  Koenig can't help himself with the lyrics though:

Back, back, way back, I used to front like Angkor Wat
Mechanicsburg, Anchorage, and Dar es-Salaam
While home in New York was champagne and disco
Tapes from L.A. slash San Francisco

But actually Oakland and not Alameda
Your girl was in Berkeley with her communist reader
Mine was entombed within boombox and walkman
I was a hoarder but girl that was back then

Religion turns up again in, duh, "Worship You," while "Finger Back" tells the story of an Orthodox Jewish girl who falls in love with an Arab guy at the falafel shop.  Conflict and love, religion and secularism.  The tensions could pull an album apart.  Instead, this is a great one.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? I'm torn because I think I'd put their first album on the list since it's so brash and inventive and unlike anything else, but if there can be only one, then yes.  (NB: I haven't checked ahead to see if there's another on here, but I'm guessing no.)

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