Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the City – review

It's no small thing for a band to shake off the shtick that made them famous and move on, but Vampire Weekend seem to have done it
4 out of 5 4
    • The Guardian,
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Those searching for evidence that, even in a world shrunk by the internet, culture from across the Atlantic can still seem beguilingly exotic to a British audience, might consider the case of Vampire Weekend. They arrived in 2008, a riot of preppy clothes, neat hair, African-inspired guitars and songs that suggested Ivy League backgrounds: replete with titles like Campus and Diplomat's Son, with lyrical references to punctuation, 17th-century architecture and "good schools and friends with pools". The band have protested about the detrimental effect all this had on the way they were perceived by those who didn't grasp that there was an element of role-playing involved. "People tried to pretend we were rich idiots," singer Ezra Koenig recently complained to the Guardian – although, in Britain at least, as many people seemed enthralled as were enervated: their eponymous debut went platinum, and its followup, Contra, entered the album charts at No 3 (and topped the charts in the US).

And if Vampire Weekend are feeling hard done by, they could perhaps consider how the British public might have reacted to an Anglo equivalent of Vampire Weekend: clean-cut Oxbridge graduates resplendent in red corduroy trousers, Boden shirts and half-blue blazers playing world music-inspired songs in which punting and the porter's lodge figured heavily. You do rather imagine said band would be in less urgent need of shelving space for platinum discs than 24-hour police protection, lest the countrywide loathing they inspired turn murderous.

But as David Bowie would doubtless tell you, in rock music even the most successful role-playing shtick won't last for ever: you can probably get two albums out of it, then it's time to move on. Which brings us to Modern Vampires of the City, audibly Vampire Weekend's attempt to break free of the style that made them famous. The arch depictions of moneyed young Wasp lives have gone, replaced by something more heartfelt. Heavy with intimations of mortality, the lyrics give the impression that Koenig has run up against a very late-twentysomething brand of angst, involving the creeping awareness that your time on Earth isn't as limitless as it once seemed: the moment you realise, as one line on Don't Lie puts it, that "there's a headstone right in front of you and everyone you know".

Similarly, the music has moved on. You strain your ears for a hint of guitar influenced by Congolese soukous, but there aren't any, although weirdly, you can catch echoes of two of their debut album's less remarked-on musical tropes. The cod-Irish folk influence heard on Bryn crops up again on Unbelievers, which shifts from a two-chord chug that recalls Blondie's Denis into the kind of penny-whistle melody that wouldn't have sounded out of place on a Pogues album. Step, meanwhile, suggests they're still intent on pursuing the Left Banke-inspired baroque pop direction found on M79 and Walcott.

If what replaces the sound of their first two albums on Everlasting Arms or Finger Back shades into slightly ordinary indie-rock, more often they shift confidently into new territory. The fantastic Diane Young offers manic, distorted drum rolls, hiccupping rock'n'roll vocals subjected to the kind of electronic manipulation familiar from chopped-and-screwed hip-hop, bursts of filthy guitar. On Hudson, another beautiful melody weaves through glitchy electronic rhythms, samples of machine guns and an orchestra playing something resembling the soundtrack to a noir thriller. Hannah Hunt sets its tale of relationship woe to an out-of-tune piano, mournful slide guitar and what sounds like that great 80s signifier of musical sophistication, the sproing of a fretless bass.

It's impressive and strangely reassuring. Even a British listener utterly captivated by the world their first two albums described might have been forgiven for worrying about whether or not Vampire Weekend could develop. A lot of noughties alt-rock bands arrived with sound and image fully formed, then struggled to transcend it when the novelty wore off, but that's just what Modern Vampires of the City succeeds in doing: Vampire Weekend suddenly sound like a band in it for the long haul. It may be a hard task to convince someone gripped by the first stirrings of mortality, but perhaps Koenig shouldn't fret too much about growing old: plenty here suggests Vampire Weekend are perfectly capable of doing it in style.

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