The band may be called Vampire Weekend, and they may have titled their third album Modern Vampires Of The City, but just between us, I don’t think they’re really vampires. I can tell, because much of the album focuses on a couple of topics that vampires just can’t relate to: God and mortality.
I remember hearing an interview with Pete Townshend where he revealed that “Who Are You” was addressed not to his fans, or himself, but to God. Mind you, he’s said other things about it too, but this was the one that made an impression on me. I found it a pretty startling revelation, given that the song doesn’t exactly come across like a prayer. Similarly, U2’s “Mysterious Ways” could as easily be a love song as a religious paean, or perhaps the other way round.
Vampire Weekend pull off this trick a few times on Modern Vampires. “Worship You” gallops along at a frantic pace, with Ezra Koenig rattling off the verses as fast as humanly possible, addressing someone accustomed to having everything “only in the way you want it.” The chorus slows down enough to be understood, but the words are oblique enough that they could be about a deity or any elevated figure, or even a concept. Similarly, “Finger Back” tears off verse after verse about punishment and pain, but that could be relationship pain as easily as spiritual pain. The spoken aside about an Orthodox girl who “fell in love with the guy at the falafel shop” brings the two together — relationship pain caused by spiritual pain. Or perhaps the other way round.
“Ya Hey” gets a little more clear, and a lot more clever. Obviously, the title flip-flops Outkast’s “Hey Ya!”, but there’s more going on here than casual rearrangement. Check out this chorus:
Through the fire and through the flames (Ya Hey, Ya Hey)
You won’t even say your name (Ya Hey, Ya Hey)
Through the fire and through the flames
You won’t even say your name
Only “I am that I am”
But who could ever live that way?
The fire, the flames, and the “I am that I am” refer pretty clearly to the story of the burning bush in Exodus 3, which means that “Ya Hey” isn’t just Outkast in reverse. It’s Yahweh, who when asked for his name, tells Moses: “I am that I am.”
And indeed, who could ever live that way? Who could be in a relationship with someone who won’t even tell you his name? “Ya Hey” takes shape as an “I’m just not that into you” song, giving a potential lover the brush-off, except this time the suitor is the Christian god. “Ya Hey” sums up Yahweh’s dilemma: “The faithless, they don’t love you / The zealous hearts don’t love you / And that’s not gonna change.”
“Unbelievers” presents the other side of this dilemma: a narrator who can’t believe, but longs to be saved nevertheless:
Got a little soul
The world is a cold, cold place to be
Want a little warmth but who’s gonna save a little warmth for me?
Believers can warm themselves with the fervent heat of faith, but agnostics and atheists are on their own. The narrator is clearly in a relationship, but with another unbeliever, and he predicts their fates with a paradox: “We know the fire awaits unbelievers.” Of course, unbelievers don’t think that any sort of fire awaits them, and the contradiction plays into a larger theme of questioning atheism. After all, half the world believes, and how does he know which half is right? If there’s even a drop of holy water to be had, maybe belief is worth it after all?
“You and I will die unbelievers” brings the album’s religious concerns together with its other prominent theme: mortality. In “Don’t Lie”, the narrator soberly notes that “God’s loves die young”, and that “there’s a headstone right in front of you / And everyone I know.” The ticking clock of that song shows back up in “Hudson”, which tells the story of another death, and proclaims “the clock is such a drag.”
“Diane Young”, like “Ya Hey”, covers its subject with the thinnest veneer of wordplay. The verses tell a story of an out-of-control friend who keeps courting death, so anybody listening to the song knows very well that “Diane Young” is really “Dying Young.” “It’s bad enough just getting old,” the song tells us, when nobody knows what the future holds, but surely dying young is even worse.
So Modern Vampires Of The City dives pretty deep lyrically, but on a musical level it stays fun, engaging, and refreshing. It sets up a tent somewhere on the road between The Shins’ melancholy grandeur and the effervescent joy of world-music-era Paul Simon. I especially love the piano, featured on “Young Lion”, and the classical-style organ that comes out in songs like “Step.”
I’m pretty firmly in the camp of unbelievers, but I’m also long way from making peace with mortality, and this assignment is a perfect example of why. I’d never listened to much Vampire Weekend before Robby assigned me this album, and now that I have, I need to hear the rest. So there’s yet another set of experiences I have to chase down before I die. Forget Diane Young — even Diane Old will never give me enough time to hear, read, play, and see everything I want to. The clock really is such a drag.
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