Modern Vampires of the City
| Vampire Weekend
Modern Vampires of the City
Modern Vampires of the City is the third studio album by American indie rock band Vampire Weekend. It was released on May 14, 2013, by XL Recordings. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
Vampire Weekend's third album is a remarkable progression from a band that was already functioning at a high level.
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Rolling Stone
The gloves are off, the wisdom teeth are out. But the kids stand a chance.
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Consequence of Sound
Expound[s] upon the Vampire Weekend aesthetic in inventive, imaginative, and undeniably successful ways.
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SPIN
His voice is almost consoling: the lap for a drunken friend’s head as they fall asleep, the hand that rocks the cradle when the baby wakes from a nightmare.
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A.V. Club Music
Handsome, thoughtful, and sophisticated.
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The Guardian
Their erudition, musical and lyrical, remains a pleasure, but what convinces on Modern Vampires are their beating hearts. 5.
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The Guardian
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.
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NME
Out go the synths, the electronica and Africa. In come the American heartland and heavenly choirs of angels.
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Billboard
Vampire Weekend's most musically accomplished album to date.
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KEXP
Modern Vampires of the City shows that whatever comes next for Vampire Weekend, the kids do, in fact, stand a very good chance.
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Drowned in Sound
Marvelous.
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Chicago Tribune
The album escapes much of the cute lampooning that once defined the band and, in its uncertainties, is much more knowing than those precocious characters ever were.
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Los Angeles Times
Captivating.
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Slant Magazine
Modern Vampires of the City charts the perils and pleasures of adulthood with impressive, singular range.
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The Quietus
Modern Vampires quite often touches brilliance, and does so without audibly straining for 'maturity' or pushing hard to be some po-faced Great American Album.
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The Current
With Modern Vampires of the City, Vampire Weekend not only makes the Junior Jump with ease, they join the likes of Radiohead and Arcade Fire as one of the most important bands of our time.
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Columbia Magazine
Modern Vampires of the City is a generous gesture, revealing a band ready to shed their autobiographical skins to better reach out to the world beyond.
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Uncut
New Yorkers at the top of their game.
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Spectrum Culture
It’s been worth the wait.
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Independent
Experimentation is generally to be applauded, but too often here it works to the detriment of the songs.
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The Know
“Modern Vampires of the City” is the most interesting thing Vampire Weekend has put out in their career.
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Esquire
Koenig gives the most subtly profound performance of his career to date.
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American Songwriter
It’s time to start thinking of Vampire Weekend not as upstarts but as one of the world’s best bands, because they’ve delivered a trio of great albums in an era when diminished expectations leave most listeners grateful for one.
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Entertainment
Vampire Weekend have presented us with an extravagant bounty of pop gifts, an album that restores our faith in the belief that pop music is capable of delivering surprises when we least expect it to.
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Clash Music
May define exactly what this band is capable of.
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Pretty Much Amazing
This transition is undeniably its definitive moment, a cathartic burst of energy and passion that serves as a direct rebuke to anyone still foolish enough to think of Vampire Weekend as an insignificant band that’s all style and no substance, purely fueled by undeserved hype.
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The Needle Drop
Vampire Weekend's latest album is a worth sequel to 2010's Contra, presenting songs that truly stand on the merits of their memorable writing and lush instrumentation.
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Speak Into My Good Eye
Vampire Weekend, like a lot of us, are wrestling with the big questions about whether or not there’s anything that comes next. And it’s a lot of fun to listen to them do it.
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NOW Toronto
Great.
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Digital Spy
Never have they been this serious, this fun, this good.
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Pop Matters
It’s the kind of album that indie bands aim at but so often miss as it captures an old soul sporting new clothes.
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Soundblab
It's just a really well-balanced, interesting and genre-transcending album which will hopefully get plenty of media attention and acclaim as it really is a unique beast.
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Sputnik Music
Average.
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Indie Is Not A Genre
Although a change of attitude, the album starts on a high, and proceeds through the clouds to greatness.
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CL Tampa
A collection of buoyant indie rock that could as easily soundtrack Saturday morning’s mimosas as it could Friday night’s existential crises.
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Sun Sentinel
The band has sacrificed the immediacy of the earlier records for something knottier and stranger.
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The Musical Hype
Indie rock darlings Vampire Weekend return as an older, more mature band on their superb third studio album, ‘Modern Vampires of the City.’
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Under the Radar
The indie-pop wunderkinds pushed the boundaries and produced a fresh, coherent and mature selection of tracks and, arguably, their best album to date.
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Diffuser
It sounds like the start of a vibrant, vivid new chapter.
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The Fire Note
Vampire Weekend successfully change things up on album number three!
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Time
Modern Vampires of the City Lives Up to Title.
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Rock on Philly
The music and vocal emotions are much more intertwined on this release, offering a greater impact on the listener, causing them to question the meaning behind every song.
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Arts Fuse
For its ambition, scope, and sheer brilliance, Modern Vampires of the City reminds me of Kanye West’s 2010 masterpiece My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
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Golden Plec
It’s the best album yet recorded by one of the most exciting bands of a generation.
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The Line of Best Fit
A pleasure.
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NBHAP
Every song could become a radio hit since they are all just perfect.
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Tiny Mix Tapes
The lyrics in this album are tell-all and pure, despite the cliched subject matter.
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Paste Magazine
Theirs may be a riches-to-riches story, but the band still strive to overcome the childhoods on the right side of the tracks. They’re pulling themselves up by their Prada bootstraps.
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Syffal
I loved it and the others though 'mehhhh, it's alright.' BUT of the 6 reviews, we did pick 5 different favorite songs and that has to count for something. The average score comes to 6.8333333 stars. Enjoy.
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All Music
Ultimately, Modern Vampires of the City is more thoughtful than it is dark, balancing its more serious moments with a lighter touch and more confidence than they've shown before.
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Medium
Musical brilliance and sharp-witted lyricism.
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Creative Loafing
Showcas[es] a maturity which cements the band's legitimacy without relinquishing its young energy or catchiness.
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FACT Magazine
This album is as life-affirming a piece of music as anything else you’ll hear this year: there’s nothing more uplifting than a good band getting better.
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Hotpress
It’s big and it’s clever as New Yorkers call rock’s bluff.
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Bearded Gentlemen Music
Assuredly this album will be hailed as one of 2013’s best but more importantly, it will become a milestone in Vampire Weekend’s career.
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Daily Press
Overall, the result is a captivating record worthy of both repetition and obsession.
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Popfection
At the end of the day, a fanfastic 43 minutes of your precious time.
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Exclaim!
The album is both more mature and personal than anything they've done previously, providing a ruminative, thoughtful take on love and death seen through the prism of temporality.
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Mimo
Modern Vampires Of the City goes where earlier Vampire Weekend records perhaps feared to tread: deeper.
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Music OMH
Vampire Weekend have re-imagined themselves as the sort of band who could be doing this well into their 30s.
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Beats per Minute
Three albums in and Vampire Weekend are still climbing.
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Boston Globe
This is the album for naysayers who dismissed Vampire Weekend as one-note guilty pleasures.
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Backseat Mafia
There was a moment when I thought “Modern Vampires of the City” might be really brilliant. But it has ended up just being very good.
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The Irish Times
A great album.
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The Michigan Daily
Mature, darker sound pervades in Vampire Weekend's ‘Modern Vampires of the City’.
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MTV
Timeless.
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The Washington Post
Vampire Weekend is as authentic as ever.
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Mockingbird
One of the best albums of the year so far.
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The Huntington News
Looking at the place in time where Vampire Weekend created the album, they are on the cusp of something new.
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The Star
One’s immediate impulse is to go back to the beginning and give these 43 pointedly serious minutes another serious going over. And then another. And then another.
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B-Sides
It is extremely refreshing.
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Spectrum Pulse
It's a great album of catchy songs that do occasionally flirt with some interesting ideas, even if it does feel like those ideas are just on the surface.
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Velocities in Music
A strong follow-up to 2010’s Contra, with a bit of track displacement but some killer songs nonetheless.
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Vulture Hound
The entire album feels balanced and there isn’t a single bit that seems to have just been thrown in for the sake of it- every move is measured.
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Punknews.org
Overall, Modern Vampires of The City sounds fantastic, but not overproduced. It's not the instant classic their debut was, and yet it has better songs.
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Glide Magazine
Modern Vampires marks the completion of a trilogy, and if that’s the case, it’s an impressive one.
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Treble Zine
The imagery couldn’t be more fitting — Vampire Weekend has truly plunged into a sublimely ethereal fog, using its thick gases to sculpt delicate emotions into a form that’s as alluring as it is enigmatic.
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The Nutshell Times
Captures the feeling gorgeously, reminiscing about youth years in the beginning and delivering some of the best lines VW have ever sung.
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Patheos
I’ve hardly stopped playing it.
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Robert Christgau
Too smart. A plus.
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Coke Machine Glow
It’s these breakup songs where Vampire Weekend demonstrate their growth most astoundingly.
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The Pop Break
Just keep your mind open to the changes and don’t let them ruin your experience. If you do, you’ll miss out on one of 2013’s finest releases.
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Chaser Eight
They sound much more soulful and convincing than they have before.
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Cherwell
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.
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The Rumpus
Thought I wasn’t sure I shared Koenig’s scorn of God, I was nonetheless grateful someone was expressing it.
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SLUG Magazine
VW may have had my attention with their first two albums, but they’ve gained my appreciation through this one.
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North Texas Daily
It may have been a very long wait for this album, but “Modern Vampires of the City” made it worthwhile.
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CPR
Vampire Weekend deserve a lot of credit.
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Las Vegas Weekly
Did I just fall in love with the little twerp who once rhymed “horchata” with “balaclava”?
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Pop Goes the Weasel
You’d be hard pushed to find a more ambitious, tuneful, confident and highly considered record in 2013 – or any other year for that matter.
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A Velvet Postcard
All in all, it’s a record which can remind us what good pop music can achieve.
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Brent Music Reviews
Ultimately, Modern Vampires of the City is nothing short of being a captivating, memorable affair.
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Aesthetic Magazine
Vampire Weekend Cap Trilogy In Dynamic Fashion With “Modern Vampires of the City”.
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The Salt Lake Tribune
A breathtakingly ambitious amalgam of both world music (whatever that is) and modern pop music where church organs and choirs chanting in Latin are seamlessly integrated with the deep-synth bass and intricate and strident percussion.
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Tablet
A guide for the perplexed.
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Fake Plastic Tunes
While Contra took steps forward from what Vampire Weekend provided, Modern Vampires makes leaps and bounds.
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O.K. West
They have gone from living solely through our computer screens to inhabiting every aspect of modern society, creating an album ready to be heard in sold out stadiums, your morning commute, those nights spent alone and the days surrounded by your friends.
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TimeOut
Vampire Weekend has fun while worrying about death on its best album yet.
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