It's tough to talk about this album without mentioning Pitchfork's nail-in-the-coffin, grotesque overrating on its top albums list. Lindsay Zoladz tries to claim that the narrative of Vampire Weekend as pretentious twats is over, but I hear no evidence.
Let's concede, this is the band's catchiest record yet, packed with far more interesting ideas than their output thus far combined, with some really nice little production tricks peppered throughout. But it's still twiggy, reedy, effete, watery indie at heart, still readymade for target commercials and tearful Zooey montages. It's still by rich kids, for wannabe rich kids, even sounding like it was wildly expensive to make. That New York looms, a city in the clouds, on the album cover seems like a severe non-coincidence.
This still sounds like a rich kid's hobby put to tape, and no matter how many hooks and tricks and swerves you pack in, the album's still anathema to rock and roll, making it a cute trick at best, an intricate scale model of real music 3/5
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