Vampire Weekend Doesn’t Want Your Defeatist Grousing

Koenig’s voice is high, clear, and mannered, but there’s something unusually intimate about his phrasing and delivery. It always sounds, to me, as if he’s both close and far away, maybe on the other end of a phone, shouting across some vast distance. He has a few recurring lyrical motifs, one of which is a vague religiosity—a deep and persistent curiosity about faith and the divine. In this way, Koenig most resembles Simon, whose music—including its deft (if ballsy) adoption of polyrhythms from sub-Saharan Africa—has always been a major touchstone for the band. Like Simon, Koenig grew up around New York City and was raised Jewish. On “Unbelievers,” a song from “Modern Vampires of the City,” Koenig wonders about salvation, forgiveness, baptism: “But what holy water contains a little drop, little drop for me?” That question—could he willingly submit to a sublime force, be it God’s love, romantic love, or anything that requires untold devotion?—comes up again and again in Vampire Weekend’s discography. On “Everlasting Arms,” Koenig asks, “Could I be made to serve a master? / Well, I’m never gonna understand, never understand.” Another of Koenig’s lyrical preoccupations—surely not unrelated—is the unstoppable trudge of time. (Koenig co-hosts an online radio show titled “Time Crisis.”) On “Step,” also from “Modern Vampires,” he worries about man’s inevitable trajectory: “Wisdom’s a gift, but you’d trade it for youth.” What if at the end of all this there is simply more unknowing? “Age is an honor, it’s still not the truth,” Koenig adds.