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When Vampire Weekend announced their indefinite hiatus in 2016, it felt like watching a promising conversation cut short mid-sentence. But if we're being honest, they'd already delivered their masterpiece three years earlier with "Modern Vampires of the City," an album so perfectly realized it almost seemed to anticipate its own farewell tour.

Working backwards from that bittersweet ending, "Modern Vampires" now reads like a band's conscious effort to mature without losing their essential DNA. After the indie darling status of their 2008 self-titled debut and the polarizing maximalism of 2010's "Contra," Vampire Weekend found themselves at a crossroads. The preppy Ivy League jokes had worn thin, the Afrobeat appropriation debates had grown tiresome, and frankly, Ezra Koenig's crew needed to prove they were more than just Columbia graduates with good record collections and better cardigans.

What they delivered instead was their most introspective and sonically adventurous work, a meditation on mortality, faith, and the passage of time that somehow managed to retain their trademark wit while diving into existential waters. The album's title, borrowed from a line in the Bram Stoker classic, perfectly captures this tension between eternal youth and inevitable decay that runs throughout these eleven tracks.

Musically, "Modern Vampires" represents Vampire Weekend at their most cohesive and experimental. The harpsichord flourishes and world music pastiche of earlier albums give way to a more integrated sound palette, where Auto-Tuned vocals blend seamlessly with chamber pop arrangements and hip-hop influenced production. Rostam Batmanglij's production work here is nothing short of masterful, creating space for each element to breathe while maintaining the band's knack for infectious melodies.

The album's opening salvo, "Obvious Bicycle," sets the tone with its gentle acoustic strumming and Koenig's reflections on growing up in New York. But it's "Unbelievers" that truly announces the band's evolution, with its driving rhythm and surprisingly heavy theological questioning wrapped in an irresistible pop package. The song manages to be both their most radio-friendly moment and their most philosophically complex, a trick they pull off repeatedly throughout the record.

"Step" might be the album's most audacious moment, sampling Souls of Mischief's "93 'til Infinity" while somehow making it feel completely natural within Vampire Weekend's aesthetic universe. It's a bold move that could have felt like cultural tourism, but instead demonstrates how the band had learned to integrate their influences rather than simply showcase them. Meanwhile, "Diane Young" (get it?) serves up their most energetic rocker, complete with distorted vocals and a guitar line that sounds like it's being played through a broken amplifier – in the best possible way.

The album's emotional centerpiece comes with "Hannah Hunt," a sprawling six-minute epic that follows a cross-country journey while exploring the dissolution of a relationship. It's Vampire Weekend's most vulnerable moment, with Koenig's vocals floating over minimal instrumentation before building to a cathartic conclusion. The song proves the band could handle longer forms without losing their melodic sensibilities.

"Ya Hey," perhaps the album's most divisive track, finds Koenig grappling with questions of faith over a hypnotic, almost dancehall-influenced rhythm. The Auto-Tuned vocals and unconventional structure divided fans, but it stands as one of their most daring artistic statements. Similarly, "Worship You" closes the album with a surprisingly tender love song that doubles as a spiritual meditation.

A decade later, "Modern Vampires of the City" has aged remarkably well, its themes of urban anxiety and spiritual searching feeling increasingly relevant in our current moment. The album's influence can be heard in countless indie pop acts who've borrowed its template of combining intellectual lyrics with accessible melodies, though few have matched its emotional depth.

The band's 2019 reunion with "Father of the Bride" was welcome, but it only served to highlight how special "Modern Vampires" truly was. Here was a band at the peak of their creative powers, unafraid to ask big questions while never forgetting to craft songs that could soundtrack a summer afternoon or a late-night existential crisis with equal effectiveness. In an era of playlist culture, "Modern Vampires of the City" remains that increasingly rare thing: an album that demands to be heard as a complete statement, a modern classic that grows richer with each listen.