The Modern Tunes From Vampire Weekend

Andriani N Pratiwi — Mon, 13 May 2013 05:17:49 +0000

After revealing six songs in the past few month, Vampire Weekend finally released their third album on 14th May 2013, one week later than originally announced (7/8 May) due to some unanticipated delays in the production of physical copies of the record. The album ‘Modern Vampires of The City‘ can be streamed on itunes since last week (7/6).

The band’s musical architect, aesthetic director, and also producer, Rostam Batmanglij said on his twitter page that “It is a good time to tell you I think it’s our best record“. With help from Ariel Rechtshaid as co-producer, Batmanglij and Rechtshaid successfully built the ‘dark’ character on this album and made it to be their best record. If you listen the song ‘Hudson‘ and look at the album’s cover, it’s an art photograph taken by Neal Boenzi for The New York Times on November 24th 1966, you can easily feel the ambiance of the tunes.

Photo by: Alex John Beck

Batmanglij and Koenig started writing materials for their third album right after they finished ‘Contra‘ tour in 2010. The band’s drummer, Chris Tomson helped them writing ‘Hannah Hunt‘, a song about Koenig’s classmates in college. After all the material wrapped up the band who just performed on Saturday Night Live last Saturday (11/6) began to record the album at L.A.’s Vox Studio.

Speaking of the whole album we can assume that it is different than the two previous albums. You can see the preppy Ivy Leagues grads have become more mature in every songs both for musics and lyrics. But you still can feel their unique characteristic. Like in ‘Diane Young‘ or ‘Dyin’ Young‘, ‘Unbelievers‘, ‘Finger Back‘ and ‘Worship You‘ you can still jumping around and dance your ass off (just like what you do when you listen to the songs on their previous albums). In the last track ‘Young Lion‘ you can hear Batmanglij’s tender voice because this song is written and sung by him.

The actor and director Steve Buscemi, who directed Vampire Weekend American Express Music Unstaged at Roseland Ballroom, said, “What I love about them is that you can either just get off on the musicality of it or go deeper.” and we couldn’t agree more with him.

Vampire Weekend Revealed New Song: Obvious Bicycle and Hudson

Andriani N Pratiwi — Fri, 03 May 2013 04:19:08 +0000

Vampire Weekend are ready to release their new album ‘Modern Vampires of The City‘. Their third album will be out officially on May 14th 2013 around the world. As we all know, Ezra Koenig described the upcoming album as “darker and more organic” and “very much the last of a trilogy”. This New York-based band has already revealed six songs from their upcoming album, Unbelievers, Everlasting Arms, Ya Hey, Diane Young, Step and the latest one, Obvious Bicycle.

Photo by: Matt Ellis/Spin

Earlier this week, the four-piece Columbia alumni held a concert directed by Steve Buscemi for American Express Music Unstaged at Roseland Ballroom, New York City, where they finally played the newest song from MVOTC Obvious Bicycle for the first time. It was also the first time we saw Ezra Koenig sang without his Epiphone Sheraton II/Rickenbacker 330. According to Rostam Batmanglij’s interview with NPR regarding Obvious Bicycle, “This song is interesting because it evolved. It started with a very hectic drum beat that I made, and that inspired me to play piano, and I just played these simple piano chords that came very quickly. I was listening Plastic Ono Band, the John Lennon album a lot, and that might have had some inspiration on me.” Their most recent track is obviously different than the other Vampire Weekend’s song. Also in this interview they leaked a short clip of ‘Hudson‘, another track from the new album.

SVANAPAPER » Steve Buscemi

The Modern Tunes From Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend Revealed New Song: Obvious Bicycle and Hudson