In the little more than four years since the last Vampire Weekend album, 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City, the entire gang of bookish indie rockers haven’t struggled to keep busy. Leader Ezra Koenig hosts his own Beats 1 radio show “Time Crisis” and co-wrote with Beyoncé on Lemonade, all while spending time crafting songs for the next Vampire Weekend LP. Rostam Batmanglij released a series of well-received solo singles, eventually leaving the band to dive headfirst into his own career—first with the collaborative album with Hamilton Leithauser and next with a debut album under his own name due this fall. Even drummer Chris Tomson found time to release his own music, this year’s messy Dams of the West record Youngish American.
And then there’s Chris Baio. Like Tomson, Baio occupies the space in Vampire Weekend outside of the core songwriting pair, and his solo career has had little to do with his main source of income. Still, the long VW break has given Baio time for a pair of solo releases. Baio’s 2015 album The Names lacked consistency, touching upon techno and pop, referencing DeLillo and Dostoyevsky, singing like Bowie and Ferry. It was an album that told us a lot about what Baio liked without directly carving a niche of his own. For his second full-length, Man of the World, the scope has narrowed and focused. Baio is finally sure of his sound, and he included an artist statement with the record to put his endeavor in context.
Baio cites several specific events for Man of the World’s inspiration: the death of his favorite artist David Bowie, Brexit, the Trump presidency, and climate change. And he is fully aware of his perspective—that of a rich, white American living abroad—while delving into these topics, addressing them directly on the album’s penultimate song: “I know Iʼm deeply privileged/To be losing just my mind/Iʼm fearful for the bodies/Of the vulnerable and kind/Iʼve got shame in my name.” Still, Man of the World delivers 41 minutes of Baio wrestling with the weight of the world, all while singing in the pantomimed voice of his hero. Where the rest of us have the occasional Twitter meltdown, Baio has gone a huge step further and set his political angst to boisterous synth pop.
The contrast is often jarring. Tonal juxtapositions aren’t too unexpected when Baio’s enunciating within spitting distance of Morrissey, but with the stakes so high, there is something unsettling at play here. For example, on the album opening “Vin Mariani,” Baio follows a line like “Learning to live with a decision/When the consequence is rather grave” with a triumphant blast of trumpets and hand-clap percussion. The consequences couldn’t sound less grave. The closest Baio comes to sounding serious is on “DANGEROUE ANAMAL”—Baio’s all-caps reflection on his own hypocrisy when it comes to climate change. The song pulses and sleeks with misguided sensuality, more seductive than anything else on the album (even if the line “I still eat meat” is not a euphemism).
That’s often the trouble with Man of the World. There is rarely nuance to Baio’s lyrics, and everything is offered up with little in the way of poetry or insight. The best moments manage to forget this is a “message” album and ease the Bowie-aping into just a vaguely British baritone. The whimsical “The Key Is Under the Mat” steps confidently closer to Vampire Weekend than any of his previous solo work, while “Sensitive Guy” winks with sly humor to match its four-on-the-floor rhythm and jubilant conclusion. But when Baio asks, “Can’t you see my aim is true?” on the title track, the album argues the opposite, and it fails to capture the wariness for the world that he’s desperate to comment on.
