Vampire Weekend have accomplished the miraculous: they’ve given their haters even more fodder. Having muffled the loudest complaints about their Ivy League Afropop (here’s are fresher, albeit from the deep end), through a combination of outrage fatigue, safety in indie canonization and their new album not actually sounding like Afropop -- the band has nevertheless managed to launch their third album Modern Vampires of the City with a grapeshot spree of ammunition. There was the Contra lawsuit leveled by Ann Kirsten Kennis, the woman upcycled into an alt-model starer on the cover. There was the kerfuffle among Internet and creative types -- a smallish group, but the one that encompasses both Vampire Weekend’s courted audience and the audience that’d like to think they’re anything but -- about vocalist Ezra Koenig’s sister, Emma Koenig, scoring book and TV deals for “Fuck, I’m In My Twenties,” a blog of “cutesily hand-drawn musings about the plight of the aimless millennial.” (Joel Stein is probably a Vampire Weekend hater.) There were the ties to Girls, the mere residual existence of them. Then there was that album title; it’s like the name of a pickup artist manual written by a Byron worshipper, more like the punchline of a bad joke at the band’s expense than an actual set of words Vampire Weekend actually committed to press. Literal press; Vampire Weekend announced Modern Vampires of the City via New York Times classified ad and thus via the exact intersection of gimmick, tweeness and upper-middle-class cachet the band hits so maddeningly often. That fake album cover that made the blog rounds last winter seemed so much less fake.

"From track one, you’re plunged straight into unwashed, underemployed millennial blues."

Yet even as the band’s image sends listeners scurrying to either pole, Modern Vampires as an album is designed to lure skeptics closer. (Transparency time: It took me years to listen to Contra because the album cover alone provoked such sputtering -- and, yes, irrational -- aesthetic objection. If I’d been given a lyric sheet in advance, I’d probably have started a blacklist just to put them on it.) Having achieved a legacy (in more ways than one; Koenig recently bragged, tongue near if maybe not in cheek, that he “truly believe[s] that some of those people [who criticized us] are wearing way more button-down shirts and boat shoes now”), Vampire Weekend is now going for gravitas. Track titles aside -- Koenig can't now, and probably won't ever resist the punning likes of “Ya Hey” or “Diane Young”-- there’s nothing as precious here as “Horchata,” though Koenig’s sermon in “Finger Back” on a Upper West Side falafel couple comes close. (It doesn’t help that he turns their meet-cute into a grand synecdoche for Israel-Palestinian peace; you half-expect him to continue “Two households, both alike in chickpeas…” If anyone would….) Likewise, the maybe-appropriation is, if not quite gone, at least quieter: rap fronting on single “Step,” queuing Souls of Mischief in the reference jukebox alongside Modest Mouse; vague raga in the pan-religious mix of “Worship You.” Rather than sounding wholly lifted, their influences are diluted enough to merely sound lively.

But then, “lively” is almost certainly the wrong word; what generally replaces Contra and previous’s archness is despair, almost everywhere. From track one, you’re plunged straight into unwashed, underemployed millennial blues: “You oughta spare your face the razor, because no one’s gonna spare the time for you/ You oughta spare the world your labor, it’s been 20 years and no one’s told the truth.” First malaise, then existential terror, as it goes; “Diane Young” is treated as cavalier as can be expected from its name, but the joyride skids by the next track into “there’s a headstone right in front of you, and everyone I know.” Album centerpiece “Hannah Hunt” begins as a lovers’ kitschy road trip, gardeners and priests showing up as friendly snapshots from the road, and ends in “Dammit, Hannah, there’s no future, there’s no answer” -- and no real catharsis; Koenig delivers the line at least twice as sedate as you’re imagining. There’s arguably no God either; though “Unbelievers” and “Ya Hey” don’t edge much past agnostic (in either direction); what there are are hymn cadences, backing choirs, organs and Old Testament references everywhere, enough that even the more chipper tracks hint at some cosmic referendum around the next hour.

All this is far more weighty, though, than the music generally lets on. Even the most ardent Vampire Weekend haters, if pressed, might admit they made fairly genial indie pop beneath the blogenfreude. Pressed further, they’d maybe admit to Vampire Weekend’s sonic inventiveness, maybe even granting they’d hear countless new details if listening for them beyond “yep, that’s almost an Afrobeat.” (Although even at that basic level, this too, has its legacy; you imagine Nate Ruess must have had Contra somewhere in hand when throwing sounds at Some Nights.) Modern Vampires ups the sonic ante even further. Only “Hudson” resembles its recessional subject matter; but though it has funeral trappings and historical weight, cellos and choirs, it’s too bass-heavy to drag. “Worship You” delivers its patter-quick vocals and Chris Tomson’s rapid-fire percussion like contrails through celestial clouds, coming off a little like what Mumford and Sons might aim for if entirely less staid. “Diane Young” gets its living in quick, Koenig making like a souped-up Buddy Holly over what sounds like a slot-machine jackpot spitting a surf-rock riff with its coins. “Everlasting Arms,” to cite a lyric, is closer to hallelujah than "Dies Irae," baroque strings settling into burbling synthpop. “Step” reaches for even more reliable joy -- Pachelbel’s Canon, immortalized in meme -- but it’s more pleasantly shambolic than obvious, and anyway it’s exactly the sort of broad stroke Koenig’s wayward-but-learning ex might latch onto. Of course, one might argue that broad strokes are the last thing Vampire Weekend needs. Another word for that, certainly one detractors wouldn’t even have considered, is “universal.” Maybe even timeless.

Modern Vampires of the City is out today via XL Recordings.