Interview: Vampire Weekend (Fact Magazine, 2007)

You might think that Vampire Weekend, named after a horror movie that vocalist Ezra Koenig and his friends never finished (‘it was a movie about vampires, and also featured King Kong’ – we’re sold already!) and recently signed to XL with a single out and an album ready to drop early next year, would be content to take the last quarter of the year off and roast their feet over an open fire. Instead, they’re killing time until Christmas with a European tour (sharing some bills with the Shins), followed by shows the entire way across the States, from California to Texas.

Luckily, things are going well: Ezra tells us that the band are ‘kind of still settling in, and we’ve had a lot to do, but it’s been fun’. And it’s not like they’re afraid of putting the work in, label or not: ‘they (XL) have been great, but it doesn’t change in a huge way. We’ve always done a lot for ourselves,’

The New York group’s latest single ‘Mansard Roof’ is more of a straight forward pop tune than the band’s earlier songs, with focused, rapid-fire drumming to boot. It hints at a movement away from the leisurely, Jonathan Richman-in-the-Caribbean feel of their first single ‘Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa’/’A-Punk’ that earned them the tagline of ‘preppy afro-beat’ – something the band have played on, claiming to specialise in Upper West Side Soweto.

The album will include both singles, but looks set to see the band continue this expansion of their sound; Ezra tells us that ‘people are getting certain ideas about our band based on two or three songs, and this is a more diverse album – though it really feels like an album, with a unified vibe. There are certain kinds of African music that we like, and there are elements that are important to us but they’re not present on every song. There are string arrangements and other instruments that people haven’t heard, but for me it all feels like Vampire Weekend.’