Modern Vampires of the City by Vampire Weekend

Modern Vampires of the City, Vampire Weekend's third album, arrived on XL on May 14, 2013, and it's the sound of a band growing up and getting spooked. They started writing it at soundchecks on the Contra tour, then took a break for side projects before regrouping in 2011. Rostam Batmanglij produced, and for the first time they let an outsider in, Ariel Rechtshaid, to help record it.

The Afropop bounce of the first two records is mostly gone, swapped for pitch-shifted voices, odd textures and a restless, experimental streak. The songs wrestle with adulthood, getting older, death and faith, from the breathless yelp of "Diane Young" to the hushed ache of "Hannah Hunt". The title comes from a line in Junior Reid's 1990 track "One Blood", and the cover is a Neal Boenzi photo of New York choking on its 1966 smog. It debuted at number one, came second in the Pazz & Jop poll and won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.