Modern Vampires of the City

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.

Background[edit]

The success of Vampire Weekend's second album, Contra (2010), established the group as "one of the past decade's great indie-rock success stories."^[1] By the time their world tour for Contra ended, the band realized they had not taken a break in nearly five years.^[1] During the break, each member pursued individual projects: Baio performed DJ sets and scored the Bob Byington film Somebody Up There Likes Me,^[2] Batmanglij recorded solo material and produced tracks for Das Racist and spent time traveling India with three friends,^[3][4] and Koenig collaborated with Major Lazer.^[5] Koenig had broken up with his girlfriend shortly before the release of Contra and subsequently moved out of their shared apartment in New York.^[3] Feeling "weird and aimless", Koenig attempted to stay in Los Angeles but he returned to New York after four months.^[1][3]

Title and packaging[edit]

The title was taken from a lyric in Junior Reid's 1990 song "One Blood". Koenig, a fan of the song, found the phrase "Modern Vampires of the City" humorous but also "haunting" as a title for their album.^[16] The album's title was revealed in the "Notices & Lost and Found" column of the classifieds section in The New York Times on February 4, 2013; vaguely defined, curlicued letters spelling the title were printed alongside the release date.^[17]


Koenig, Batmanglij, and art directors Matt de Jong and Asher Sarlin were credited with designing the album's packaging.^[6] For the cover art, the band chose an image taken by New York Times photographer Neal Boenzi, depicting a smog-shrouded, dystopian-looking New York City. Boenzi took the photo atop the Empire State Building in November 1966, when the city was plagued by a smog problem. Because of the subsequent rise in global air pollution, the band chose the photo believing it may have rendered "some kind of future".^[3]