In Modern Vampires of the City, New York four-piece Vampire Weekend leave behind the Cape Cod niceties of their eponymous debut and follow-up, Contra. The Ivy League campus green is now but a memory, making way for the cold uncertainty of Big Apple falafel shops and the dark, deep Hudson River. This makes for a release that lacks the chirpy, ‘preppy’ character that so defined their previous efforts, but also one that’s altogether more mature, more complete, and really quite beautiful. (Oxford comma? Check.)

‘California English’ is here usurped by a language considerably darker. Frontman Ezra Koenig is mindful of his own mortality throughout, with death proving to be a recurring theme. ‘Diane Young’, the album’s fantastically frenzied first single, is, of course, a play on “dyin’ young”. ‘Finger Back’ sees Koenig croon, “I don’t wanna live like this, but I don’t wanna die.” And on ‘Don’t Lie', the tone is similar: “there’s a headstone right in front of you and everyone I know.” These are lyrics you’d expect to hear in a typical Morrissey ballad, but not from the band behind ‘A-Punk’. Nevertheless, they’re thoughtful and compelling: the harmonies on opener ‘Obvious Bicycle’ quite literally invite you to “listen”, and listen you should.

The oddities we’ve come to expect (and love) remain, though. Another single, ‘Ya Hey’, is bonkers in all sorts of ways. ‘Don’t Lie’ is pure drum-driven baroque pop, reminiscent of ‘M79’. The same with ‘Step’, the hauntingly introspective B-side to ‘Diane Young’, which manages to sound both minimalist and epic all at once. There’s a hell of a lot going on behind and beyond the lyrics. Weird synths, pitch-shifted vocals, amplified drums, mistuned guitars and pianos: they’re all here. It’s to the immense credit of multi-instrumentalist and producer Rostam Batmanglij that these can coexist without it all becoming a little too much.

Highlights of MVOTC, then, are plenty. Songs like ‘Diane Young’ and 'Unbelievers' are as catchy as they are brilliant. ‘Hannah Hunt’, meanwhile, serves as the album’s centrepiece: what starts off as a simple enough tale of lost love soon springs into life, Koenig screaming his melodic cries over Batmanglij’s sprawling guitars and keyboards. It rounds off a gorgeous first half. This is as good as it gets, though there are also some gems in the second half of the album. ‘Hudson’, in particular, is almost creepy in its intensity; an eerie orchestral number that seems more film soundtrack than indie track, it is testament to the band’s shift in focus.

This is an album perhaps not as immediate as its predecessors, not as instantly accessible. But it’s still fun. It’s still quirky. It’s still Vampire Weekend. More than that, though, it’s something new—and consciously new at that. The Graceland element, the Paul Simon influences: they’re still here, but crucially are now bound up in motifs and a style of music very much the band’s own. At nearly 30, Ezra and co. are finally growing up and coming home. Or, as ‘Step’ would have it, “the gloves are off, the wisdom teeth are out.”