Vampire Weekend's Modern Vampires of the City

I think I have outgrown Vampire Weekend. I used to love Vampire Weekend. I listened to their self-titled (2008), "Contra" (2010) and "Modern Vampires of the Weekend" (2013) heartily in college, along with Elvis Costello and The Clash. I still listen to Elvis Costello and The Clash. I no longer listen to Vampire Weekend. I have heard little of "Father of the Bride" (2019), though I love "This Life", and I can't remember a single song from "Only God Was Above Us" (2024). I remark on all this because Vampire Weekend is really the first band I have fallen out of love with. It's a strange feeling for me.

One of my favorite verses used to come from "Holiday":

A vegetarian since the invasion she'd never seen the word "Bombs",
She'd never seen the word "Bombs" blown up to 96-point Futura, she'd never seen an AK in a yellowy Day-Glo display,
A T-shirt so lovely it turned all the history books grey.

I'm puzzled by this verse, looking at it now. I think I recognize what it is I admired, and what it is I'm ambivalent about now. I love the glide of words in these verses, particularly how they revolve around the violent-sounding word "Bombs"; how "Bombs" then leads to the pugilistic "96-point" and then the cutting "AK", finally resting in the banal "yellowy Day-Glo display" before Koenig's protagonist turns her attention to a T-shirt. I like how it describes human attention: you can read about atrocities, and yet what is of real life-and-death importance in an average life is love, career, a lovely article of fashion.

Following it up,

I got wheels, I got Cutter spray and a healthy sense of worth, half of me is the gasoline but the other half's the surf,

the magic of the verse being how effortlessly Koenig moves from industrial things - "wheels", "Cutter spray", "gasoline" - to the beach - "surf". The "healthy sense of worth" phrase is funny. Again, it is an analysis of the importance of the banality of life.

But banality is banal.

Later, in the floral, sentimental "Diplomat's Son", Koenig paints the scene,

It's not right, but it's now or never, and if I wait, could I ever forgive myself?
On a night when the moon glows yellow with the riptide, with the light from the TVs buzzing in the house.

Ooh, a mystery, a mystery befitting The New Yorker. What is our protagonist planning in this well-furnished house?

Which is the problem. It's a story worthy of The New Yorker. Meaning, it's a story meant to amuse, not to mean anything.

Which leads me to the source of my ambivalence toward Vampire Weekend, which can be summed up in this question: What's the point of Vampire Weekend?

Their self-titled is pretty much preppy punk. It came out in the ... renaissance? of indie-rock. "Vampire Weekend" are full of simple-but-catchy harmonies with Koenig singing about campus romances and dramas, concerning Oxford Commas. It's meant to entertain. For that reason, it's probably their best album.

"Contra" is a better album, in terms of the variety of the music and the sophistication of their arrangements, what with the pondering "Taxi Cab" and the pummeling (courtesy of the drummer Chris Tomson) rap-like "Cousins". But you vaguely get the sense Koenig is getting at something, and then that something is sorta gotten at with "I Think UR a Contra", and you're like ... alright.

For a doofy 20-year-old, sure, there's profundity abounding in "Contra". To a 30-year-old, eh. Again: banality is banal. A lot of Koenig's lyrics strike me as, "Life is gonna Life, huh?" Or, "We're getting kinda old, right?" And it's like, sure.

Vampire Weekend isn't pretentious. They're not pretending they're smarter than you, and they're not pretending they tapped into some secret sauce of the universe. They're nostalgic, sure, romantic, yes, but not overly so. The band is not bad, and Koenig's not a bad songwriter, but he just kinda circles the same themes every album - even up to "Only God Was Above Us". In fact, Koenig is clever and can come up with a deft metaphor. But ultimately, they're just ... middling. Not ambitious enough, not willing to provoke, not willing to bother, not willing to lose their audience's attention. I think Vampire Weekend, in their current incarnation, is capable of making very pretty, very interesting music, and Koenig is able to come up with an interesting turn of phrase, but what, precisely, does it serve?

And so, now we arrive unto "Modern Vampires of the City", their most coherent and probably best album.

I think it may be impossible for me to give this album a fair shake, mostly because I simply don't engage with it the same anymore. I'll try to recall the emotions I felt in the past for it, when I had absolutely adored it, and I'll try to look at it as neutrally as possible now.

But the best way to describe the album is: angst, and lots of it, and none really directed at anything in particular.

So let's start with "Obvious Bicycle":

Morning's come, you watch the red sunrise, the LED still flickers in your eyes, oh, you oughta spare your face the razor, because no one's gonna spare the time for you.

This is an incredible verse, with a full scene of sleeplessness and hopelessness depicted in the first two lines, of a singer observing the sun rising with complete apathy. Then there's Koenig's wonderful couplet, "Oh, you oughta spare your face the razor, / because no one's gonna spare the time for you," which, perhaps, many people have felt before, such that there is no need for further elaboration.

No one's gonna watch you as you go, from a house you didn't build and can't control.

Another lovely couplet, portraying the angst throughout the album.

And finally, the last verse:

I'll be half asleep on the floor of our school gym, thinking of you and wondering if anyone else could begin, to listen.

Another lovely bit of angst, of the singer looking backward in time and reviewing their memories nostalgically, holding out for a familiar face, a warm hand. And that's the last verse.

So what's the song about?

Is it a collection of images, put in poetic form? Well, no: the singer doesn't strike at anything concrete. If it's a poem, it's not a good poem, which should put you in poet's place, feeling the poet's emotions. If you've felt the poet's emotions before, then you may gather something from the disconnected scenes presented before you, but the problem is that you must have felt it before, there is no introducing the audience to anything new. I empathize with the "house you didn't build and can't control"; I get that line; but by the end of the song, the concept behind that line isn't developed, into resentment, into guilt, into self-reflection. It's a line.

Again, it's angst. It's angst all the way down. You either get it or you don't. And it's worthwhile to say I once got it, but now as I stare at it there's nothing concrete for me to mull on or introspect on. This is no Joni Mitchell, "Settle down into the clickety-clack / with the clouds and the stars to read, / dreaming of the pleasure I'm going to have / watching your hairline recede, my vain darling." This is no Bob Dylan, "Little rooster crowing, / must be something on his mind; / well I feel just like that rooster, / honey, ya treat me so unkind." You have to aim at something, and then throw it.

We move onward to "Believers", a great track (and I don't mean this ironically, I do think "Modern Vampires" is full of great tracks, which makes it all the worthier of analysis):

Got a little soul, the world is a cold, cold place to be, want a little warmth, but who's gonna save a little warmth for me?

which is a fantastic couplet, playing on the imagery of the album art. The second line, in particularly, despite Koenig's lack of affect conveys all the fear and doubt he wants to, particularly bcecause it is preceded by the first line.

And then, bam, sledgehammer-subtlety:

We know the fire awaits unbelievers, all of he sinners the same,
Girl, you and I will die unbelievers, bound to the tracks of the train,

and it's like, alright, I know what the song is about now.

I do like "Girl, you and I will die unbelievers", which grounds the drama of the song between two characters, but the song more-or-less reveals its dilemma in the first thirty seconds. So what more are we listening for? The audience expects something interesting as the song unveils itself, but Koenig doesn't go into details on what the unbelieving is, what follows are more lyrics of despair. When Mick Jagger sings about how she's under his thumb, I want to hear in what ways she's under his thumb. He doesn't repeat over and over that she's under his thumb, he goes into how and why. I mean, he could do that! It depends on how the singer sings it! But "Unbelievers" is, well, a pretty song, so I'll give it credit for that.

I think "Step" is probably the best track on the album, and maybe the best song Vampire Weekend has written, because Koenig actually does elaborate and paint scenes.

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 LA slash San Francisco,

It's like, okay, this is a Destroyer-like character, musing "Like you, I've been around the world, / seen a million girls, I've seen Bangkok." The singer then winds on about "his girl":

Your girl was in Berkeley with her Communist reader, mine was entombed within boombox and Walkman, I was in the heart of a girl, but that was back then,

and, listen, I love detail, but what ... can you conclude, what do you see from this? It's like, okay, one girl likes to read, and the other likes music.

The chorus:

The gloves are off, the wisdom teeth are out, what you on about? I feel it in my bones, I feel it in my bones, I'm stronger now, I'm ready for the house (such a modest mouse) I can't do it alone, I can't do it alone.

So what's the problem here? Some issue with domesticity? Monogamy? Conjugality? What is being depicted, what is the conflict driving the singer?

Then there's my favorite verse:

And punks who would laugh when they saw us together, well, they didn't know how to dress for the weather, I can still see them there, huddled on Astor, snow falling slow to the sound of the master.

I know I'm shitting on this album a lot, I do actually admire the album, and this actually is my favorite verse in this song, mostly because it actually feels an emotion toward something; the singer has a moment of mockery or resentment against people who are making fun of the couple. "Huddled on Astor" is an admirable phrase, and "snow falling slow to the sound of the master", while ambiguous, conveys the image of snow falling on New York perfectly.

I like "Modern Vampires of the City" when it's the most melancholic, and indeed Koenig's pen is at its richest in this album, but "Diane Young" is also a good-good song on it:

You torched a Saab like a pile of leaves, I'd gone to find some better wheels, four, five meters running 'round the bend when the government agents surround you again,
If Diane Young won't change your mind, baby, baby, baby, baby right on time

It's the clearest, most declarative song on the album, with imagery that immediately captures your attention. Koenig is also at his most biting on this song in his whole career, jeering,

Out of control but you're playing a role, do you think you can go to the eighteenth hole? Or will you flip-flop the day of the championship? Try to go it alone on your own for a bit?

It's clear Koenig can be mean and penetrating when he wants to, analyzing the foibles of the careless and heedless. But then:

Nobody knows what the future holds and it's bad enough just getting old, live my life in self-defense, you know I love the past, 'cause I hate suspense,

with the music entering its peak loudness and Chris Tomson thundering on the drums. And to me it's like ... you've given the whole conceit of the song away. Like, what mystery is left? You painted this whole scene to reveal exactly what you painted the scene.

I'm being kinda unfair to the song because not all songs have to be written in this precise way. "Lost in the Supermarket" is not a particularly subtle song, but it's colorful. It also finishes its thoughts: there's a vulnerability when Mick Jones sings "I heard the people who live on the ceiling, / scream and fight, most scarily, / hearing that noise was my first ever feeling / that's how it's been all around me." Portrait painted. Jones is not condemning his protagonist, he's not mocking his protagonist, he is simply describing his protagonist. Yes, the chorus "I'm all lost in the supermarket, / I can no longer shop happily, / I came in here for a special offer, / guaranteed personality" is very clear in its intent, but the most important thing is that you don't know what The Clash thinks of the subject of their song. You could say, "Of course they're mocking the person!" but you can just as well say they empathize with this lost soul, even if only to a minor extent.

This quality, by the way, is why The Clash's music is so powerful: as jaded as The Clash are, they're a very emotional, human band. Listen to "The Card Cheat"! Listen to "Stay Free"! THE CLASH CARES ABOUT HUMAN BEINGS! I don't get the impression Vampire Weekend even cares about themselves.

It's not as if "Modern Vampires" is devoid of subtlety, as can be seen in "Don't Lie" with this great opening verse:

One look sent knees to the ground, young bloods can't be settling down -
Young hearts need the pressure to pound so hold me close, my baby

Later, Koenig sings,

Young Turks, young Saturday nights,

(which brings to mind Tim Robinson's Dangerous Nights crew, whom Ezra Koenig is serenading at the end of the segment),

Young hips shouldn't break on the ice,

which I think is fantastic imagery and great alliteration, pivoting on the word "young" and varying it with three energetic nouns as "bloods", "hearts", "Turks" and "hips". Later, there's the metaphor of

The low click of a ticking clock,
there's a lifetime right in front of you, and everyone I know.

which is a thing Morrissey would sing.

Now, I almost don't want to talk about "Hannah Hunt", because I think this song is the reason why I hate the album. It's a great song, but its ending trashes the album.

"Hannah Hunt" is the most poetic Koenig has ever been:

A gardener told me some plants move but I could not believe it,
'til me and Hannah Hunt saw crawling vines and weeping willows as we made our way from Providence to Phoenix.
A man of faith said, Hidden eyes could see what I was thinking. I just smiled and told him, That was only true of Hannah and we glided on through Waverley and Lincoln

Aaaaaand that's it. I'm not going any further. Otherwise my disappointment will echo around the world.

These verses opening "Hannah Hunt" are incredible. They're cinematic, they reveal all the emotion in the song without explicitly saying what the singer is feeling. There is a feeling of doom without arriving at the object of doom, and so the audience's heart is left lurching on the edge of a cliff. It's a sad song without having sad things happen in it.

And then, bam, Koenig ruins this effect by telling you exactly what's happening in the song.

Okay, sure, Joni tells you explicitly she is missing someone, but she doesn't go so far as to sing

If I can't trust you, then damn it, Hannah, there's no future, there's no answer,

she just tells you she has a broken heart.

Let's be clear: 20-year-old me loved the fuck out of this song. I distinctly remembering listening to this song on repeat when doing laundry in college. I wanted Koenig's angst. I wanted to write stories about emotions such as this.

And guess what? I wrote blank, meandering stories from this material. Because Koenig doesn't make explicit who Hannah Hunt is and what the singer and Hannah's exchanges of melancholy look like, except that Hannah "tore the New York Times up into pieces", which seems to me to be the couple's real problem, that they read the New York Times.

Because it's blank, you can paint your own crummy gloomy relationship onto it, but the problem with that is it leaves the audience no room for introspection, you just think, "Oh, that relationship didn't work out and I'm sad." It's angst. It's vibes. It's Katy Perry moping about how one of her boyfriends got away (and no, I'm not linking the song, I hate it and hear it in public places all the time). It's beige.

I do love the opening of "Everlasting Arms", which begins with "I took you to concert / and came to ruin, / leave me to myself, leave me to myself" and ends with "if you were made to serve a master, / you'd be fighting by the open hand, fighting by the hand," which is the clearest explanation of Koenig's self-doubt. But I'm just not getting into the rest of the album; the material really doesn't change or show any interesting change in direction, except "Hudson" which is a quite-interesting third-person story.

Come to think of it, "Hudson" is kinda great, but it's so different from the rest of the album I may have to return to it in a song-of-the-week format. It's so melancholic that it's worth exploring psychologically.

This whole time I haven't really talked about Rostam Batmanglij and Ariel Reichstaid, who produced the album (I forgot Reichstaid used to be everywhere mid-2010s). This is the last album with Rostam, and this is the last "ornate" album, with the next two being more guitar-focused. Vampire Weekend never lost their pop-iness, but they seemed to have lost Rostam's ability to build complex musical themes throughout the album. But I haven't really mentioned the album's production because it doesn't matter all too much: yes, this is Vampire Weekend's most coherent and most complex album, but the music doesn't seem to have a singular object to enliven. This comparison may highlight the division: Ezra is Vampire Weekend's self-titled album, and Rostam is "Contra". Ezra likes his stories, and Rostam likes his mood music. And these two, I don't think, and I know this is absurd to say, didn't work well together. I mean, yes, this worked together fine, there are no stories of messy break-ups, I mean Rostam tried to make Ezra's anxieties baroque but Ezra's lyrics were better served gothic; and as to the rest of the band Chris Baio and Chris Tomson, I don't know what they contributed because I'm dumb (I know though the two work on their own individual projects apart from Vampire Weekend).

Again, I don't like shitting on things for the fun of shitting on them - I like to think those days are behind me - but "Modern Vampires" strikes me as a toothless, fuzzy album that is kinda about something, and that something is something I really like, but I can't for the life of me say concretely what it is about, and I defend the artiest-fartiest shit on this blog all the time. It doesn't help that later Vampire Weekend albums cover the same themes of lovelessness and domestic quarreling.

And this doesn't mean my opinion of Vampire Weekend won't change again, I'm merely describing how I feel now.