VAMPIRE WEEKEND : contra costa | contra mundum

Vampire Weekend performing at the Outdoor Theatre during Coachella 2024 [13 April 2024]

Setlist:

Vampire Weekend is set to perform at The Daily Show on 10 April 2024 in New York City. This is their first televised performance in five years. 

Also, here are some other OGWAU buzz 🤔👀:

Vampire Weekend's special album release show for Only God Was Above Us at the Moody Amphitheatre [aka VW total solar eclipse show, 08 April 2024]

Setlist:

The sunflower shirt that Ezra wore is from Jacquemus ($255):

Here’s a photo of Ezra wearing the shirt (for reference):

And like what I pointed out on Twitter, it’s also the same shirt that Taehyung of BTS wore at the Billboard Music Awards:

Listening through Father of the Bride is a fascinating aural journey. The opener is reminiscent of Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam” with a country twist (I realize this sounds mad), while closer “Jerusalem, New York, Berlin” sounds a bit like SOPHIE on downers (equally mad, I know). The album is long but has been sequenced beautifully, and none of it feels like fat that could have been cut.

“Why does the world need another chapter of this story? I really wrestled with that, even with the third album, let alone the fourth album,” Koenig says. “And sometimes the answer is: the world doesn’t need another chapter of this story. But somewhere there’s probably a core group of people who are growing up with you at the same rate.”

“If I look too broadly at the music industry or the world, it makes what Vampire Weekend does seem so insignificant,” he continues, “and then I realize that’s why you can’t worry about your place in the larger ecosystem. You just have to focus on telling your own little story. Every album, the tone changes, the vibe changes, the lyrical content changes a bit, and you just have some faith that there are people on a similar journey to you.”

Ezra Koenig on fashion, and his thoughts on Ralph Lauren (via Highsnobiety):

When Vampire Weekend released the single “Harmony Hall” in January, some publications were quick to join the dots between their return and fashion’s supposed volte-face to prep style. “Vampire Weekend are back and it’s good news for everyone,” reads Esquire. “Firstly, it heralds the return of their warbling Ivy League pop, something the world has clearly been staggering on without for way too long now.”

Of course, Vampire Weekend hasn’t been making that kind of music or dressing that way for a long time. When we meet, Koenig is wearing rose-colored chords by Rowing Blazers (okay, you got him there), a Dries Van Noten quarter-zip, and a single-breasted coat that looks like it’s by Marni. He’s a menswear boss in every sense, but with an impertinent twist. He digs clothes with provenance, like the fluffy teddy bear fleece his buddy Mordechai Rubinstein gifted him (there were only 50 made and Koenig has two) or the uber-rare Cape Cod T-shirt that was initially given away as a prize on Time Crisis, his radio show on Apple’s Beats 1 radio station.

These days, he’s more likely to pair an Online Ceramics tee with Air Max 97s rather than Ralph Lauren Polo and boat shoes. This sartorial transformation feels symbolic of Vampire Weekend’s brave new world, one where the weather is breezy and joints are passed around freely.

It’s bizarre how the prep tag continues to stick, and Koenig denotes his kinship with Ralph Lauren in different, unexpected terms. Lauren, like Koenig’s family, came from the working class Bronx Jewish community yet has become symbolic of WASP-y prep. “I never experienced Polo or Ralph Lauren as being the brand,” he says. “The way that people like my parents, my family, talk about it, it’s hard to explain how funny it is to a certain type of Jewish person that Ralph Lauren’s real name is Ralph Lifshitz and he’s from the Bronx.”

He expresses the notion that his fandom is rooted in a larger story of assimilation, art, and humor. “With Polo in particular, the fakeness of the brand is so built-in that, again, if your dad is a Jewish guy that grew up in the housing projects in the Bronx, you could never experience Polo or Ralph Lauren in terms of the surface level of the brand. All those other layers are so baked into it.”

From The Sunday Times (UK):

'Hold You Now' - album opener; described as 'gorgeous' and 'folky' and has a choral sample from 'The Thin Red Line' (a co-writing credit for Hans Zimmer)

'Married in a Gold Rush' - a 'lush country duet' with Danielle Haim (features the line 'we got married in a gold rush / but the rush never felt the same')

'We Belong Together’ - also features Danielle Haim; described as 'gushing' and 'an anthem that offers the line “Keats and Yeats/Bowls and plates” yet somehow isn’t annoying'

'Unbearably White' - "'Infighting among white people about who is marginally more or less white is not particularly interesting,' Koenig shrugs. Is that what that song is about? 'There’s an aspect of it.'"

'Jerusalem, New York, Berlin' - album closer; described as the song 'set for most scrutiny' on the album. 'The song seems sad, featuring perhaps the first reference in pop to the Balfour Declaration.'