Vampire Weekend is a band that sort of came out of nowhere in 2008 and became a massive hit just as quickly. The press and fans both fell in love with the band’s indie rock sound that again didn’t really sound like anybody else in the industry. Their sound has been labeled as African Pop mixed with Western Classical which to me sounds like a band to just be thrown again in the Indie Rock category. Either way you dice the band up they have come a long way since their Columbia University days in New York from where the band started.
The lead singer and guitarist Ezra Koenig was an English major who was interested in film and most of his projects during college were his poorly produced movies that had obscure concepts. One of the memorable ones is about a boy named Walcott who is in Cape Cod during a vampire invasion and he can either choose to flee the scene or stay in Cape Cod and try to save everyone from the vampires. If you hadn’t realized it yet the film was called Vampire Weekend and when Koenig decided to give up film and focus on music he decided to name the band after his movie. He got a band together consisting of Rostam Batmanglij, Chris Tomson and Chris Baio and the quickly put together some songs for an EP to start playing for people around the NY area. The band quickly got some underground attention and some independent labels started looking their way before the band had really even put much effort into it.
Soon they were approached by XL records to sign a contract to put a full length out with them in early 2008. The band revamped some of the tracks off the EP and wrote some new songs that would consist of their first LP that was simply selftitled as Vampire Weekend. The album was praised by almost any major critic or magazine you could think of and they were becoming one of the new hipster bands in all cities as well as a Hollywood favorite. The band mostly sings about upper middle class issues, English grammar, NYC and Cape Cod which are quite obvious in Koenig’s perfect lyric writing. Songs like ”Oxford Comma” are so catchy and easy to sing to it just shows how sometimes just basic song writing and lyrics can still blow people away 30 years after The Beatles. The mega hit “A-Punk” is played through bars around the United States Friday and Saturday nights and who can deny the awesome guitar lick in the beginning that kicks the song off ? I fell in love with the band after I heard that song and started loving new songs such as “M 79″, “Walcott” (Song about the protagonist in Koenigs movie) and “The Kid’s Don’t Stand A Chance”. The band even left behind some awesome B-Sides you can pick up if you look around the internet such as “Ottoman”, ” Ladies of Cambridge” and “Arrows” which were done for B-Sides to singles and movie soundtracks.
You don’t have to wait to much longer for the follow up because it’s coming out in January, is entitled Contra and if you want to hear the first track “Horchata” you can download it for free off the band’s website. The album has had select groups listen to it and apparantly the buzz about the album is huge just like their self titled. It seems this band is gonna stick around for a few more albums and I look forward to hearing their upper middle class prep shit thrown at me.
