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. The group began to write songs for the album during soundchecks on the supporting concert tour for their 2010 album Contra. After a period in which each member explored individual musical projects, they regrouped and continued working on Modern Vampires of the City in 2011. With no deadline in mind, the band brought in an outside record producer for the first time, Ariel Rechtshaid, to record the album.

With Modern Vampires of the City, Vampire Weekend attempted to depart from the African-influenced indie pop style of their previous records. Broadly experimental, the album’s sound was the result of a variety of unconventional recording assets, including pitch shifting. Subjects explored on the record include characters with adult responsibilities, reflections on growing old, mortality, and religious faith. Vampire Weekend titled the album after a lyric in the 1990 Junior Reid song “One Blood” and chose a Neal Boenzi photograph of the 1966 New York City smog event as the album cover, citing the haunting qualities of both the title and photograph as the reason for using them.

Modern Vampires of the City debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, becoming Vampire Weekend’s second consecutive number-one album in the United States. By December 2014, the album had sold 505,000 copies in the US. It was also a widespread critical success and ranked by several publications as 2013’s best album, while finishing second in the annual Pazz & Jop critics poll. It has since been ranked on many lists of the best albums from the 2010s. In 2020, the album was ranked at number 328 on Rolling Stone‘s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list.