[1] During the break, each member pursued individual projects: Baio performed DJ sets and scored the Bob Byington film Somebody Up There Likes Me,[2] Batmanglij recorded solo material and produced tracks for Das Racist and spent time traveling India with three friends,[3][4] and Koenig collaborated with Major Lazer.

[6] Early drafts of the tracks "Obvious Bicycle" and "Worship You" were produced at OK Go frontman, Damian Kulash's old house in Chicago, before being taken to an official studio to work on.

Batmanglij and Ariel Rechtshaid, the album's co-producer, used a pair of mirrored solid state MacBooks with UAD-2 Satellite Firewire Cards so they could take their recordings anywhere and work on them from separate locations with maximum ease.

For tracks such as "Step", drums were recorded on a Varispeed Tape deck set to a lower speed so that they would play back faster and more high pitched.

[8] In an attempt to make the tracks sound less harsh, the band and their recording engineers used a spectrum analyzer, Sonnox SuprEsser and heavily automated EQs to edit out harsher, colder frequencies and soften the mix.

[8] Desiring to "check the relative warmth levels", the engineers would "go in and perform surgery and automate EQs" in order to make the mixes listenable.

"[11] According to Heather Phares of AllMusic, the album abandoned the eclectic influences of Contra in favor of "a less audacious production style and smaller instrumental palette: guitar, organ, harpsichord, and the occasional sample combine into a rarefied sound that suggests a more insular version of their debut".

[8] Alexis Petridis viewed that some songs echo lesser known "musical tropes" from the group's previous albums—a mock Irish folk influence is heard on "Unbelievers", while "Step" features "Left Banke-inspired baroque pop".

[14] According to Brice Ezell from PopMatters, this album is "very much an indie rock record" because of Koenig's voice and diction, which reveals "the youth that he and his bandmates so often strive to shrug off."

Ezell asserts that, on songs such as "Unbelievers", the "reckless abandon" expressed by the lyrics reveals "the group's grasp on the genuine rebellion that indie rock ought to strive for.

"[15] In comparison to the band's previous music, the lyrics explore more mature, world-weary themes such as growing old and disillusionment with American foreign policy.

[11] Koenig discussed Modern Vampires of the City in the context of the band's first three albums, which he compared to Brideshead Revisited: "The naïve joyous school days in the beginning.

It was Vampire Weekend's second consecutive number-one record on the chart, as well as the nineteenth independently distributed album to top the Billboard 200 in the Nielsen SoundScan era (1991–present).

[26] Reviewing the album in The Independent, Simon Price called it Vampire Weekend's "most cohesive and convincing effort yet" featuring their most accessible compositions.

[28] Ryan Dombal from Pitchfork said the singing suited the music fluidly on songs that sounded more natural and dynamic than the band's previous work.

[31] Alexis Petridis, lead critic for The Guardian, believed Vampire Weekend successfully avoided the gimmicky sounds of their previous albums and wrote more genuine lyrics dealing with mortality rather than "arch depictions of moneyed young Wasp lives".

[13] Slant Magazine's Jesse Cataldo said the songs may sound dense and wordy, but they would be "immediately potent on a purely visceral level" for listeners, "striking a perfect balance that makes for what's perhaps the best album of the year".

[35] Nathan Brackett of Rolling Stone said the album featured a particular spirit and songcraft evocative of urban life,[32] while Robert Christgau appreciated how many twists the coming of age themes revealed.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) because of how each lyric and musical element was "pleasurable in itself and aptly situated in the sturdy songs and tracks, so that the whole signifies without a hint of concept".

In the Chicago Tribune, Greg Kot wrote that Vampire Weekend occasionally blundered in an attempt at ingenuity with the songs "Ya Hey" and "Finger Back" while finding the album "darker, slower and weirder" than their previous records.

[citation needed] AllMusic named it one of the year's 50 best records,[37] and it was voted the second best album of 2013 in the Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics nationwide, published by The Village Voice.

[38] Christgau, the poll's creator, ranked it first in his own list for The Barnes & Noble Review, writing in an accompanying essay that Vampire Weekend had made an art pop record that "simulates predigital warmth by tinkering with a dizzying panoply of studio stratagems and divides the most emotional songs of the band’s career into distinct parts impossible to enumerate due to how often the arrangements change up gorgeous drum tracks, but I dare you to dance to them".