This is in fact our lowest Vampire Weekend score ever.

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[5.58]

Alfred Soto: Ezra Koenig is the only modern singer who can sing against this arrangement without collapsing into preciousness. And what an arrangement: the harpsichord, of course; the piano run beneath Koenig; a rhythm unafraid to leave spaces. The lyrics, alluding to Croesus and Dar es Salaam and modest mice, acknowledge their own opacity (“What are you on about?”) and are good enough to evoke instead of pin down. Narrative isn’t Vampire Weekend’s strength anyway. As an album track, rewarding. As a single, we’ll see. 
[8]

Patrick St. Michel: Vampire Weekend have a few great songs and they also have a few real clunkers. “Step” falls in neither category, but rather in the same spot the majority of their output ends up for me: pleasant enough. It sounds like a more refined version of a Shins’ song… until the chorus, which sounds vaguely like a liberal-arts Jason Mraz. It is both clever and less clever than it thinks it is. I think it’s fine, but I don’t see what the big deal is.  
[5]

Brad Shoup: Double A-sides are a joke in a world where vinyl is a fetish object. But there’s nothing funny about referencing “Step to My Girl”, a slept-on classic from not-so-slept-on Bay Area titans Souls of Mischief. It’s just the tip of the reference-game penis: we have Run-DMC, Modest Mouse, Jandek and True Blood. I live in a post-“Rules of the Game” world, so I gotta be more circumspect about the Vamps, but gawd they make it hard when they release baroque-pop W– A——- prom tunes flavored with hip-hop cadence (to say nothing of that screwed snatch at the close). Abebe’s right: Ezra Koenig made his bones writing what he knows, and should not be penalized on the face of it. But now he’s playing a different game, one we’re all too familiar with. Better is “Diane Young,” which pays tribute to George Michael: now that’s some excavation work.
[5]

Anthony Easton: Modest love is what the song is about, and what I feel for the song — small, intimate, and much less propulsive than the choruses of their previous singles. It even allows the occasional cliche. I know their problems, but I find his voice so beautiful, and the inspirations have moved around and become more complicated. The last line or so seems to be a genuinely new way to handle electronic modulation of voices. 
[7]

Will Adams: Between the Pachelbel harmony, synthetic choir and nearly arrhythmic vocals, I have to wonder if they’re actually serious. I can’t tell whether it’d be worse if they were.
[3]

Rebecca A. Gowns: What would happen if Pachelbel met Souls of Mischief in the dream of a boring Brooklyn yuppie?
[2]

Iain Mew: I liked Vampire Weekend’s first album fine, but it was listening to “Horchata” and its strange elegance while walking through the snow in late 2009 that I started to love them. Now they’re back, there’s snow outside again, and while the harpsichord in “Step” is more like “Walcott”, it has the same weightlessness to it as “Horchata” that perfectly fits the weather. Sentimental without drowning in it, fitting in enough sideways references and bouncing bass to keep it from just drifting, comfortingly familiar but not complacent. Listening on headphones also enhances it through realising that “what you on about?” and “such a modest mouse” are mocking asides whispered in one ear, rather than meant to be part of the narrative, which helps make what sense needs to be made of it.
[8]

Ian Mathers: Ezra Koenig’s lyrics still have that oddly specific/jumbled feeling of an insider who’s just self-aware enough to at least try and get back out again; sometimes it’s a look that suits them, but sometimes it just sounds garbled and arch. “Step” veers closer to that end of the spectrum, while still nailing the weirdly precise emotional specificity that means that even people who would just like to be insiders will find them striking some odd chord (plus, I bet it makes way more sense as part of the album). As for me, I liked “Taxi Cab,” a lot actually, but I’m not sure that’s the kind of thing they should be trying out for singles. What did “Horchata” have that this one doesn’t? A great chorus.
[6]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Like other first singles from Vampire Weekend’s previous album campaigns, “Step” takes its time. The song swings along, depicting a story of characters issuing emotional warnings and keeping their distance in as ornately a manner as expected. It is a familiar VW release tactic, releasing the mood piece before the crowd-pleaser, but this is my favourite type of VW song: a sadsack slow-motion lullaby for stylish emotional stasis. It is the type of song that creeps under the skin and makes its way to the heart, even if the meaning beyond its highlighted lyrics escapes me in its knotty specificity. (“Age is an honour/still not a truth” is the puzzler to beat – for now, at least.)
[7]

Crystal Leww: Vampire Weekend has always reminded me of summer, so I was really surprised to hear this track, which sounds like a sleepy winter morning. Maybe that has a lot to do with pace or maybe it has to do with the fact that I’m hearing this in March. My favorite part is towards the end when everything except for the bass drum stops, and Koenig harmonizes with himself. The twinkly synth, the plinky piano, they all end up feeling superfluous. 
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: The latest shot from the “Canon In D”. The lyrical mix of wilful obscurantism and arrant nonsense isn’t exactly a new development for Vampire Weekend, but for some reason it’s more of a problem than it has been before. Maybe it’s because the lack of much else interesting going on (or, to be generous, fairly minimalist backing) makes it stand out, similar to why “I Think Ur A Contra” was the worst song on the last album. It’s not terrible, but all it really does is create an urge to listen to Coolio’s “C U When U Get There“.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: Aw, somebody’s heard Odessey and Oracle.
[5]