In the Vampire Weekend song “Finger Back”, Ezra Koenig sings of an Orthodox Jewish girl who falls in love with an Arab boy who works at a falafel shop. This is that falafel shop called Jerusalem (“you know – the one at 103rd and Broadway”) and you can see the laminated poster of the Dome of the Rock. In the song, “Jerusalem” is actually a play on words; it’s the name of a falael shop but it’s also a part of the Passover Seder Prayer (“Sing next year in Jerusalem”). When you look at the rest of the lyrics, this song can be interpreted as a meditation on how tradition and history are a part of our everyday lives and yet sometimes we forgo the past in the name of love; even when the world seems to be going up in flames (“The city’s getting hotter like a country in decline”) we still somehow find time to fall in love. This deep religious context in a pop song is incredible, and it’s another reason why ‘Modern Vampires of the City’ is one of the best pop albums of this decade. #nyc (at Jerusalem Restaurant)