'Modern Vampires of the City' at 10, Me at 30
'Modern Vampires of the City' at 10, Me at 30
The last time we millennials felt like we were the ones worth paying attention to
I pitched around a 10-year anniversary piece on Vampire Weekend’s “Modern Vampires of the City” and, for various good reasons like other writers calling dibs or outlets no longer really doing anniversary pieces or even existing anymore, couldn’t get it picked up anywhere in time. So, I decided to just do it here, which means I can publish it a few days before the actual anniversary on Sunday to fit my own publishing schedule.
The opening line of “Step” by Vampire Weekend mentions a place called Mechanicsburg alongside Angkor Wat, Anchorage and Dar es Salaam. Mechanicsburg was the next town over from where I grew up in Central PA, the invisible political border only about a mile as the crow flies from my childhood home. I have no idea why Ezra Koenig included it along with the rest of the list of far-flung, interesting and seldom-visited places.
“Modern Vampires of The City,” the third album by Vampire Weekend, which featured “Step,” came out on May 14, 2013. At that time, I was finishing my junior year of college about two hours away from Mechanicsburg in the much bigger city of Philadelphia, hoping I wouldn’t have to return to town for any extended period of life once I graduated the next spring.
That Vampire Weekend album coming out at this phase in my life felt like a nice bookend moment, as the band was pretty present for me at the beginning of college, too. I still have a vivid sense memory of being on the PA Turnpike in the backseat of my dad’s Ford Escape, all of my worldly possessions in the trunk and seat next to me, ready to be moved into a cramped dorm room with a stranger, listening to a burned copy of Vampire Weekend’s self titled 2008 debut. So many words that I didn’t know before listening to (and after listening to) that record. Kefir? Stories about city life with extremely tasteful furniture. Literary heroes in expensive-sounding clothes, oozing well-read intellectualism that a 16 year old can aspire to.
By the time “Modern Vampires” came out, I was now a fully formed pseudo-intellectual, 21-year-old college soon-to-be-senior at a school in a major city, part of the demographic that every marketing exec strives to connect with: the youngest people of drinking age.
“Modern Vampires” completed an album trilogy for Vampire Weekend, so to speak. I like looking at albums as trilogies wherever possible, or at least packages of two. I think they exist more than people might think. For Vampire Weekend, it felt overt. It was the last album to feature a vintage photograph under the trademark Futura font. (Fun fact, the song “Holiday” by Vampire Weekend makes a direct reference to Futura font – a nod to all the fontheads listening, or at least the many listeners in art school.)
Those three albums had taken people in my generation from driving age to college graduation, soundtracking the moments where we were certain we were cooler, smarter and better looking than we were. Plugging our iPods into our shitty cars’ tape deck adaptors to impress passengers by listening to “Oxford Comma,” pregaming in college dorm rooms with a touch of class by listening to “Giving Up the Gun” instead of (or at least in addition to) Skrillex. And now getting ready to leave the scholastic world forever and join the real world, applying for internships and jobs and writing capstone papers while listening to “Dianne Young.” Each album served a purpose for a generation uniquely insufferable in its own way, myself included often, and those albums were all extraordinarily good. Pitchfork reviews don’t lie about this kind of thing. But “Modern Vampires” felt like the opus. Everything that made the band great from the previous two albums polished and perfected.
No band felt as perfectly tailored for millennials who wanted to move to the city, meet interesting people who would turn them onto even more interesting art and music and literature, buy a nice sweater and maybe a coffee table book of photography, and put on an air of well-read maturity while still doing all of the things expected of a kid at a public state university.
And after that album, Vampire Weekend changed, and so did just about everything for people born in the early 1990’s.
I graduated college in May 2014, Vampire Weekend wrapped up touring for “Modern Vampires” that September, and then they hung things up for a while. Two years later, Vampy Weeks multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij – part of the band’s creative fulcrum alongside Koenig – announced that he’d be leaving the band.
Koenig left New York for Los Angeles, shifting the entire Ivy League, stuffy Northeastern brick city vibe the band had so carefully cultivated, and started writing what he described as “springtime” songs reflective of the California weather he was living in.
Koenig left New York and Taylor Swift moved in.
The album, 2019’s “Father of The Bride” was good. It was a sprawling exploration of newish-to-them sounds and influences, featuring artists like Danielle Haim, and their live show took on a jam band feel.
All good things, and I’ve driven the point about bands being free to explore new directions into the ground on this very newsletter. Shit, I’ve also written about Vampire Weekend and the concept of aging.
But, the 10-year anniversary of “Modern Vampires” makes me think even more about how the album was a turning point not just for the band, but for its fanbase, too. It was time for us to grow up. To graduate. In the time that passed between “Modern Vampires” and “Father of the Bride,” the things that Vampire Weekend benefitted from early – 2010’s “hipster” culture, college radio that doesn’t exist anymore, an only-slightly more pure social media landscape – was going away.
The millennials, in just a few years, would no longer be the tastemakers, movers and shakers of culture. By the time “Father of the Bride” came out, many were pushing 30 if not already there, now with more stability, more disposable income, but markedly less pop culture clout. We could no longer refer to ourselves as “kids” as easily. We were now guys.
TikTok existed when “Father of the Bride” came out. When “Modern Vampires” came out, we were still figuring out how to use a new app called Vine.
I saw them on the “Modern Vampires” tour on the back lawn of the Mann Center here in Philly. It was all general admission in an area adjacent to the amphitheater, and I made sure to position myself close to the stage.
When I saw them on the “Father of the Bride” tour, it was in the amphitheater, I mostly remained seated, and I most definitely had to go to work the next morning at my office job.
“Modern Vampires of the City” was a huge accomplishment for Vampire Weekend. It was the culmination of that point of their career. Not an end point at all, but certainly a crash of that first wave. If it was the end, it would’ve been a fitting finale.
It’s almost impossible to recognize the end of an act in your own life in real time, but it’s certainly easy to look back and see. We often use cultural touchstones to mark these changes. Transitions. In this case, it was an album from a band that made us feel so cool giving us one last chance to feel high on ourselves before our time in the cultural spotlight would end.
God damn, it’s such an apt title, too. “Modern Vampires of the City.” We all felt like we were on the bleeding edge of culture. That everyone wanted to look at us in our cities and that everything we did was worthwhile and worthy of sharing online.
But in just a few year’s time, by the time another album using Futura came out, this time with a drawing instead of a vintage photograph, our slang was outdated and we were wearing yesterday’s clothes.
Ten years on, the album and the band are still relevant, and I think it’s fair to still call it the band’s high water mark. Whether they spend the rest of their career chasing that or following the narrative they started with “Father of the Bride,” we’ll see. People my age, however, can’t go chase their own high water mark from 2013.
That just looks like a mid life crisis.
PS - I love Genius’ explanation as to why Ezra Koenig would include Mechanicsburg in “Step.”
Today’s Snakes and Sparklers musical guest is Steady Hands.