{"id":16,"date":"2010-03-03T12:08:29","date_gmt":"2010-03-03T19:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=16"},"modified":"2010-09-12T16:05:54","modified_gmt":"2010-09-12T23:05:54","slug":"vampire-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2010\/03\/vampire-weekend\/","title":{"rendered":"Vampire Weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"vampire<\/a>

Vampire Weekend<\/p><\/div>\n

VAMPIRE WEEKEND<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Discovering inspiration in contradictions and cleverness<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sure, Vampire Weekend singer \u00a0and guitarist Ezra Koenig was an English major at noted Columbia University and taught junior high English. And yeah, on the band\u2019s new Contra<\/em> album he rhymes \u201chorchata\u201d with \u201cbalaclava,\u201d among other clever linguistic feats. What of it?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a criticism people try to lodge at\u00a0 us,\u201d Koenig says with a resigned chuckle. \u201cIn my experience, a lot of our fans like our lyrics\u2014they like thinking about them and trying to decode them. There aren\u2019t too many people who are Vampire Weekend\u00a0 fans in<\/em> spite<\/em> of the lyrics. And if people think my using a big word somehow means I\u2019m part of some old-money network, that\u2019s a total joke.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plenty of words, big and small alike, have been devoted to Vampire Weekend since the band\u2019s quirky, perky pastiche of Western and African pop caught the public\u2019s fancy two years ago. While making Contra<\/em>, the group\u2014rounded out by keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij, drummer Christopher Tomson and bassist Chris Baio\u2014was well aware that expectations would be high for the follow-up to 2008\u2019s acclaimed Vampire Weekend.<\/em> \u201cOur main goal was to make a record that had its own sound and existed in its own world,\u201d notes Koenig. \u201cWe were trying to find the middle ground between doing something totally different and still using some of the same ideas we had on the first record.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tracks on Contra<\/em> offer a disparate but cohesive melding of upbeat, multifaceted musicality with poignant, literate lyrics and often bouncy melodies\u2014hence the title. While the word may conjure for some the notorious Nicaraguan freedom fighters who made headlines during the Reagan years, Vampire Weekend intends the word in its literal Latin meaning: \u201cagainst\u201d or \u201cin contrast to.\u201d \u201cI wanted every song to speak to a bigger theme, and to me that theme was \u2018contra,\u2019 the idea of an opposition, the idea of duality,\u201d Koenig explains.<\/p>\n

The assurance with which Vampire Weekend weaves together those varying strands on Contra<\/em> suggests that the deafening buzz that has greeted the band\u2019s every move will continue well into the future. \u201cMy one fear was that somehow we\u00a0could mess stuff up so badly that we would disappear with our second album,\u201d Koenig admits. \u201cAs we started working on it, I knew that wasn\u2019t going to happen. No matter if it matches the success of the first album or not, in a certain way it\u2019s already a success.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Katherine Turman<\/p>\n

Jan\/Feb 2010 Issue of\u00a0M Music & Musicians<\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VAMPIRE WEEKEND Discovering inspiration in contradictions and cleverness Sure, Vampire Weekend singer \u00a0and guitarist Ezra Koenig was an English major at noted Columbia University and taught junior high English. And yeah, on the band\u2019s new Contra album he rhymes \u201chorchata\u201d with \u201cbalaclava,\u201d among other clever linguistic feats. What of it? \u201cIt\u2019s a criticism people try […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[905,904,902,901,32,906,903,10156,900],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1449,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/1449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}