Vampire Weekend Updates On Upcoming Album
Frontman Ezra Koenig talks about the importance of storytelling and country artist Kacey Musgraves’ influence on the upcoming LP4.
By Admin on December 12, 2017
Although Vampire Weekend has lost a member, Rostam Batmanglij, the band is still continuing on with LP4. He may not officially be a part of the group anymore, but he has contributed quite a bit to the new album, frontman Ezra Koenig has confirmed.
For the fourth album, Vampire Weekend worked with producer Ariel Rechtshaid, who is well known for producing Haim’s albums. The band also worked with Rechtshaid for Modern Vampires of the City.
Koenig stresses that songwriting was the key point in the upcoming LP in an interview with Entertainment Weekly:
“Songwriting as a concept is the single most important thing on this record. To me that’s the untapped frontier for Vampire Weekend; nobody wants to hear the Vampire Weekend trap album.”
Surprisingly, he also stated that country artist Kacey Musgraves was a heavy influencer for the album:
“I went with Ariel to see Kacey Musgraves at the Greek Theater in LA [in September 2016]. The thing I loved about it was it wasn’t too loud — I’m definitely becoming a cranky old man — so I could really hear every word. The music was really clear and her voice was really clear.
“I’m the type of person who has spent hours poring over the avant-garde poetic lyrics of certain songwriters, and there was something that felt so good [about how] from the first verse, you knew who was singing, who they were singing to, what kind of situation they were in. After the show I realized there’s not a ton of Vampire Weekend songs where you could listen to the first verse and immediately answer the question of who’s singing and who are they singing to.”
Koenig also said that the band is making conscious effort to “age gracefully and not boringly.”
