Video: Vampire Weekend – “Gen-X Cops”

Directed by Drew Pearce. From Only God Was Above Us, out April 5 on Columbia.

In retrospect Father of the Bride was a disappointment. It was too long, too many guest vocals. It sounded “mature.” Boring. Maybe Modern Vampires of the City had set the bar too high and nothing they did could’ve lived up to it. Which kind of makes me think it might be time to give it another spin to see if it really does suck or if I was just heaping my own baggage and expectations onto it.

Regardless, they made us wait another five years since then before putting out something new so maybe this time it’ll be worth the wait. These first two songs are pretty dope. On first listen “Gen-X Cops” and “Capricorn” both sound more akin to Modern Vampires than anything on Father of the Bride. That’s not to say it sounds like a step backwards, but more like a return to form. The upside to waiting five or six years between albums is that everybody gets all excited for something new and forgets about the stuff that bugged them last time.

So I’m cautiously optimistic for Only God Was Above Us. These two songs are what I want my Vampire Weekend to sound like. Plus, the new album is only 47 minutes long, which is how long an album should be…so it can just barely fit on one side of a 90-minute tape. There’s also the whole thing about vinyl albums only being able to fit about 23 minutes per side at maximum fidelity. So there we go. Cross your fingers and hope the other eight songs are as good as these first two.

Continue reading New Vampire Weekend: Gen-X Cops and Capricorn →

Video: Vampire Weekend – “Harmony Hall”

Directed By Emmett Malloy. From Father of the Bride, due later this year on Sony. Single out now.

You’ve probably already heard this song, right? Vampire Weekend’s major label debut has been on microwave rotation on all my preset satellite radio stations since it dropped about a month ago. In fact, it’s #1 on Billboard’s Adult Alternative Songs chart for the week dated March 2. It’s also #18 on regular old Alternative Songs (not Adult) and #12 on the Rock Airplay chart, receiving 4.9 million radio impressions. So I guess it’s a legit hit.

Good for them.

I’ve liked this band since the first time I heard “Oxford Comma” and I’ve been following them ever since. It’s hard to believe that was over eleven years ago, but as Ezra Koenig knows, we can’t let the low click of the ticking clock bother us too much. It’s been almost six years since Modern Vampires of the City, so there are high expectations for the follow up.

When Rostam Batmanglij quit the band in 2016 to go solo, I was worried about the effect his absence would have on their future. Batmanglij produced and arranged the previous albums and was a seemingly irreplaceable part of the Vampire Weekend sound. Turns out he came back for “Additional Production” on the new single. So that’s cool.

“Harmony Hall” works well as a re-introduction. It’s got those vaguely “African” sounding guitars, clever, collegiate lyrics (“the stone walls of Harmony Hall bear witness”), and the recycling of a punch line from a song from the previous album (“I don’t wanna live like this but I don’t wanna die” from “Finger Back”). Still sounds like Vampire Weekend.

The piano sounds like early 90s UK rave pop (if that’s a thing). I spent a semester in Scotland in 1991 and all the dance music at the student union had that same piano in it. I appreciate that Vampire Weekend keeps finding new ways to remind me of being in college.

Vampire Weekend: web, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

Continue reading New Vampire Weekend video: Harmony Hall →