Vampire Weekend’s Latest Album Is Ezra Koenig’s Guide for the Perplexed

On ‘Modern Vampires of the City,’ the frontman wrestles with Jewish questions, calling to mind a personal Kol Nidre

By Wayne Robins for Tablet Magazine

Remembrances of holy days in Tarrytown and Rye
I don’t wanna live like this, I don’t wanna die — “Finger Back”

Three years ago I was seeking tickets for one of three sold-out Vampire Weekend concerts at Radio City Music Hall. The tickets were a kind of early Sweet Sixteen gift for my youngest daughter. I was looking for three good seats—for Jackie, her girlfriend, and myself—and I suspect that among the three of us, I was the most dedicated fan.

Having worked as a pop music critic for 40 years, I knew someone to call for the favor of buying “house” seats without going the scalper route. But there was an awkward aspect to the request. I could only use tickets for Sept. 15 or 16. The third show, Sept. 17, was erev Yom Kippur, and the only song in my heart that night would be “Kol Nidre.”

But I was curious how Ezra Koenig, Vampire Weekend’s singer, guitarist, and primary lyricist, felt about performing on the holiest night of the Jewish year. So, I asked his mother, Bobby Bass. I had known Bass, a New Jersey psychotherapist, since we attended Bard College together in the late 1960s; in the early 1970s, we lived on the same street in Chelsea at a time when one could rent a Manhattan apartment for under $200 a month.

She told me that Ezra had gone to Hebrew school and been bar mitzvahed in their suburban, predominantly gentile New Jersey town. He decided that organized religion was not for him. That was his choice. Koenig played that Yom Kippur show at Radio City on Sept. 17, 2010, and I respect that choice.

But I do wonder if Koenig even had second thoughts about that Yom Kippur show. Vampire Weekend’s third album, Modern Vampires of the City, was released this May. Like its 2010 predecessor, Contra, it made its debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. The band has been playing the North American and European festival circuit during the summer and headlined the Ottawa Folk Festival on Rosh Hashanah and the Boston Calling Festival last weekend. It begins its North American arena tour Sept. 19 in Philadelphia and will play the Barclays Center in Brooklyn Sept. 20.

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