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If you were to draw up an indie hype league for 2007 then the US would be currently sitting ten points clear with one game left to play such has been it’s dominance in the emergence of exciting, much talked about bands in the last few months. Black Kids and Yeasayer have kept the bloggers in a job since the summer and we’ll be bringing you more about them in the coming weeks but today’s subject of our admiration is Columbia University’s finest export Vampire Weekend. They crossed the Atlantic to play their debut UK shows recently and Gigwise caught up with them for a chat over nachos “that tasted like Indian food”.
For those of you still virgin to the charms of Vampire Weekend here’s a quick description – think Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ played by four preppie guys who have that undercurrent of New York swagger and confidence framed by guitars crisper than a Wall Street collar. Or in the words of front man Ezra Koenig with out the journalistic spin “simple, clean sounds. Fresh guitar, very simple organ, drum and bass sounds.” The thing most people pick up on first though is the African rhythms which permeate threw several of the quartet’s tracks and this is accentuated by the bands short biog on their Myspace page which simply reads: “The name of this band is Vampire Weekend. We are specialists in the following styles: ‘Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa’, ‘Upper West Side Soweto’, ‘Campus’, and ‘Oxford Comma Riddim.’”
“Some of the songs that have the most pronounced African influences we were playing really early on,” explains Ezra. “So that was something we really wanted to pursue but the bigger picture of this band is that we want to make something that sounds new, not boring or clichéd, so African music is part of it in that it’s a music we’re excited about, something that we can draw from but we feel like that about a lot of music.” Before we move on from the subject he adds about the ‘Graceland comparisons: “For a lot of people when they hear a certain African sound the first thing they think of is ‘Graceland’. Which is good for Paul Simon but unfair to thousands of other musicians. I think he did a really good job of fusing different sounds together on that album, but its just one example of many albums that really took different things and made something new and fresh out of it.” Heed those words fellow music journalists.
The four members of Vampire Weekend have been friends since the beginning of College but the band only came into existence eighteen months ago following several years of messing around together in other musical projects. Previously Ezra had been in a “folk, psych” band with Rostam Batmanglij (Vampire Weekend keyboard player) and a “rap” group with drummer Chris Tomson which Rostam produced. According to Ezra they “played around campus mostly at first before moving downtown” when they became more serious about the band following their graduation. Before signing to their current home XL they put out a single through New York art-group Space 1026 and were tipped by Talking Heads’ David Byrne after he witnessed them supporting Animal Collective, not a bad start we think you'll agree.
Thanks to the modern wonder that is the internet much of what will make the band’s self titled debut album (The physical release is actually February 18) is already out there and available but Ezra promises that they have a few new songs and new mixes of old tracks held back for the record. Says the front man of the release: “We’re all excited to get it out because all this talk of being a hype band or something, I feel like when we actually release an album that’s when we can really show people that it was all hype or that we made a real album. So it’ll be nice for people to have a whole album to introduce us to them rather than just reading press.”
And what will people find when they listen to the album we ask? Rostam takes up the baton: “In each we’d like there to be moments where things are being combined that maybe haven’t been together before. That’s like a goal for a least one part to have that ‘Oh, I haven’t hard that before’ moment.” Ezra adds: “It’s like a collection of songs that really touch on a lot of styles and there’s all sorts of different stuff and instruments going on but it has a unified vibe. That’s what we were shooting for. I think it’s pretty cohesive.”
The songs were all produced by Rostam, a role he has had since the beginning and one he isn’t likely to give up easily (when we ask if they considered an outside producer we're told "that wouldn't have been good"). He tells us: “I think we all had a vision of how we wanted it to sound. We wanted to make it so you couldn’t place the production or say ‘that sounds really 80s or that sounds really 90s’. Just to have it in that world where some things can exist, where they’re just floating.” Cue confused looks from Gigwise and the rest of the band. He tries to clear things up: “Where you hear it and think ‘When is this song from?’ But we also wanted it to sound a little bit futuristic, or just to think about what does futuristic sound like?” Erm…ok.
So now that all the recording is out of the way it is all about taking the material into the live arena for Vampire Weekend. Chris Tomson explains to us: “It’s definitely different live. With the recordings a lot of it was stuff arranged by Ros. He did a lot of string arrangements and used a lot of different instrumentation which at this point would be difficult to pull off live and I don’t think we’d necessarily want to, maybe someday. With playing the live shows it’s been a more stripped down sorta thing, samplers on two keyboards with all those sounds. More minimal, nimble, streamline and energetic. We’ve always treated them (live and on record) as two different things.” Anyone who has witnessed them live could only agree that they pull it off with some style.
And with that the nachos have been consumed, even though they don’t taste like nachos and the salsa isn’t up to the New York standard, and Vampire Weekend are away for an over night ferry to the continent. They’ll return in the New Year to our shores with their songs about commas, life on Cape Cod and tales of College Girls. Gigwise cannot wait.
