The Details

VAMPIRE WEEKEND

Modern Vampires of the City

Warning: This is the first Vampire Weekend album that doesn’t get into your pants on the first date. You’ll throw it on, hoping for the instant pleasure of 2010’s Contra, but it opens with a ballad. The second song is peppier but still sounds like an outtake from a Wes Anderson soundtrack. And the third song is … another ballad? Where are the Ivy League rave-ups and stuffed-shirt grooves we’ve come to love from the World’s Whitest Band?!

They finally kick in with song four, and not to say “Diane Young” and “Finger Back” aren’t good, but they make you realize Modern Vampires of the City is also the first VW album in which the slower tunes are the highlights. In fact, time seems to stop when Ezra Koenig sings “I feel it in my bones” during “Steps.” Did I just fall in love with the little twerp who once rhymed “horchata” with “balaclava”?