2. Modern Vampires of the City / Vampire Weekend

Modern Vampires of the City is an American pop-music classic. Vampire Weekend's glorious third album is arguably stronger than their first two albums, which was almost inconceivable given the strength of those records and the feeling in some quarters that they had exhausted their available musical avenues.  Man, were the unbelievers wrong.

Ezra Koenig, Rostam Batmanglij, Chris Baio, and Chris Tomsen are no longer college kids and their arch insights have given way to arresting ruminations, yielding to heavier subjects like the thin-lines in long-term relationships, the tenuous nature of (un)belief, and the creeping fear of aging and death.  And they manage to unpack these burdens while remaining the most accessible and enjoyable pop band on earth.  The album's target demographic is broad, and in no particular order: suburbanites, New Yorkers, aging hippies, Yiddish professors, kids, preppy college students, Orthodox Jews, lapsed Catholics, faithful Mormons, housewives, and girls who want to marry Koenig.

Koenig's incisive lyrics are optimistic, clear-eyed, and deeply troubled. But as arty as his observations sound, and as penetrating as his eye-brow raising Jewish doubt may be, the band's underlying music is the saving grace, a perfect blend of heady populism and high-brow accessibility.  As usual, the melodies are moneymakers. And Batmanglij's and Baio's rhythm section is consistently creative.  With the record's meticulously produced bass, drums, and keyboards, the album is both spare and maximal, with everything coated in studio bubble wrap.  Significantly, the lead Afro-guitars from the first two records are almost entirely missing--Koenig doesn't even play guitar on the album tracks--yet the band simultaneously reinvents and retains the Vampire Weekend sound.

So where to start scratching the surface? 

How about the gorgeous two-part harmonies during nothing-like-it opener "Obvious Bicycle."  (Are you listening high school a capella teachers?). How about the unbelievers bound to the tracks of the train, wondering what holy water contains a little drop, little drop for me? ("Unbelievers").  What about the French Revolution harpsichord synths entombed within boombox and walkman, and the vivid love/rap song complete with references to Angkor Wat, the Communist Manifesto, Modest Mouse, and the Resurrection ("Step").  Or perhaps the warped barbershop baby-baby-baby during a punny song about dying young ("Diane Young").  I suppose we could start with the joyful bounce of bass on "Everlasting Arms," and those infectious guitars forever reminding Paul Simon that he missed out on writing this one. 

Of course, there is the stunning novel-as-song "Hannah Hunt", detailing the cross-country disintegration between longtime companions--weeping willows, hidden eyes, and Santa Barbara lead to a torn up New York Times, a brilliant piano sendoff, and the narrator's final exclamation, an album centerpiece of sorts: if I can't trust you then damn it, Hannah.  There's no future.  There's no answer.  Though we live on the U.S. dollar, you and me, we've got our own sense of time.

Or we could dive into more detail and discuss the perfectly-placed spoken word on the frenzied "Finger Back:"

Sing next year in Jerusalem
You know, the one at
W. 103rd and Broadway?
Cue this Orthodox girl fell in love
With the guy at the falafel shop
And why not?
Should she have averted her eyes and
Just stared at the laminated poster
of the Dome of the Rock?

Or maybe we turn to the hopeful, searching pleas in the soaring harmonies of "Worship You:"

We worshiped you
Your red right hand
Won't we see you once again?
In foreign soil, in foreign land
Who will guide us through the end?

But then we should finally consider "Ya Hey," a play on Yahweh, that inscrutable Old Testament prankster, where Koenig wrestles with His seemingly strange games and the dissolving belief of modern Zion and Babylon:

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?
Ya hey, ya hey, ya hey

Does he find some sort of musical solace?  Perhaps that brief moment where

outside the tents
on the festival grounds
as the air began to cool
and the sun went down
my soul swooned as I faintly heard
the sound of you spinning "Israelites" into
"19th Nervous Breakdown."

One thing is certain: during my first run through the album, I swooned.  And knew that I was listening to an all-time classic record.  Whether the realization dawned during the piano in "Hannah Hunt" or the guitar breakdown in "Everlasting Arms," I cannot be sure now.  But it was an engrossing feeling, a self-aware recognition of timeless pop genius unfolding in real time.  Perhaps other listeners experienced the same sensation with Bridge Over Troubled Water, Pet Sounds, Rumours, or Graceland.  Believe it.