A
S EZRA KOENIG
remembers it, his band
Vampire Weekend’s
2013 best alternative
music album Grammy
win for Modern Vam-
pires of the City felt like
“perfect timing.” The act had been nomi-
nated once before (for 2011’s Contra), but
after three albums, hundreds of shows — and
nearly as many think pieces about whether
it was OK for a band of Columbia University
graduates to be incorporating West African
music into indie rock — “it was a nice way to
cap the previous six years,” continues Koe-
nig. Then, for the next six years, the group
more or less disappeared.
Koenig kept busy: He created a Netflix an-
ime series called Neo Yokio, started hosting
a radio show called Time Crisis on Beats 1,
participated in songwriting sessions with
Kanye West, worked with Diplo on music
that made its way onto Beyoncé’s Lemonade
(which earned him another Grammy nomi-
nation) and became a father with his partner,
actress Rashida Jones.
When Vampire Weekend finally returned
this May with its fourth album, Father of
the Bride, much had changed — not only for
Koenig, but for the band itself. Founding
member Rostam Batmanglij had departed
(though he still wrote and produced two
tracks on FOTB) and a host of new collabo-
rators joined up, including Danielle Haim,
who duets with Koenig on three tracks;
Steve Lacy of alt-R&B outfit The Internet;
and pop-leaning producers like DJ Dahi (Big
Sean, Drake) and BloodPop (Justin Bie-
ber, Madonna). The results, though, sound
distinctly like a Vampire Weekend album
— far-flung melodies and eclectic rhythms
made disarmingly familiar, weighty lyrics
delivered with a light touch — albeit a more
sprawling and ambitious one than the group
has ever made, and which could well earn
the band another handful of nominations,
perhaps even for album of the year.
Nestling into a cozy corner of an upscale
bar in Midtown Atlanta (where the band
is about to play the Fox Theatre), Koenig
orders a black coffee and, during the course
of a 90-minute conversation, sounds much
as any fan would expect — engaged, thought-
ful and ever-willing to muse at length on the
Grammys, the industry and the state of rock.
The first round of Grammy voting is
coming up soon. As someone who has
won one, do you vote?
I have voted before. Last year, I logged onto
the website the last day and voting had
already closed, so I felt very disenfranchised.
I wasn’t outraged enough to go demand my
vote be counted, but I was upset because
I was looking through the producer of the
year category, and I think hip-hop has been
severely under-recognized. I remember
looking at all the songs Metro Boomin pro-
duced that year, and that’s an insane amount
of iconic, forward-thinking productions,
my favorite being “Mask Off ” by Future. I
remember thinking, “This is so obviously the
producer of the year.” The fact that people
like Metro Boomin haven’t been recognized
actually motivates me to vote.
What did it mean when you guys won?
It felt good. The best alternative album,
when you look back and see who has won it
over the years, that’s a fairly strong category.
It’s not like one of those head-scratcher cate-
gories where one year it’s right on the mon-
ey, the other year, “Whoa, what happened?”
It felt like a real milestone.
When you finished the last album cycle,
did you know it would be a while before
you came back?
Yeah. I wouldn’t have quite guessed six
years, but I was very sick of everything. I
didn’t want to get back into the studio, I
didn’t want to get back on the road, I was
really not wanting to think about music or
Vampire Weekend at all.
Did you consider pulling the plug
entirely?
I never quite thought that. When people in
the past have asked me if I would make a solo
album, it barely made sense to me because
I’d reach out to the same collaborators, I’d
approach it the exact same way. The truth is,
I’ve put my identity as a songwriter into Vam-
pire Weekend since the beginning. I never got
to that extreme place where I was like, “I’m
done with music.” As long as I’m interested in
music, there will be a Vampire Weekend.
So after all that time off, you didn’t feel
any creative shackles on you?
The only shackles on Vampire Weekend,
ever, have been the public’s expectations.
But when I think about what constitutes
a Vampire Weekend album, I can’t help
but feel like it needs to check at least a
few boxes, especially coming back after
six years with a lineup change. The indie
rock that we never particularly wanted to
be associated with, but were, is now pretty
unfashionable, so coming back with this
album felt like walking through a minefield.
If this album didn’t have some immediate
singles, I can imagine the way people would
have reacted. Maybe that’s why I needed to
make 18 songs, just to have enough room to
hit all those marks.
Eighteen songs — it’s a lot, it’s low-
hanging fruit for the haters to be like,
“Too long!” But I’d stop and say, “Is there
a 10-song version that’s going to feel more
focused to people?” Then I’d always be like,
“For our fourth album, it can’t be 10 songs.”
SOUND MIND
After a six-year absence, Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig is as
engaged with the industry as ever, reflecting on the importance
of staying “on your own trip” and the ambitious and beloved double
album that could return his band to the Grammy winners’ circle
BY DAVID PEISNER
PHOTOGRAPHED BY SAMI DRASIN
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