Feature: Vampire Weekend

It’s been a meteoric rise for Vampire Weekend since a handful of taste-making blogs shone the spotlight on their music in 2007. The New York four-piece enjoyed the warm embrace of hype and felt the sting of the backlash that naturally follows. But after three years, two monster albums and ever-growing crowds, the band are in need of some respite. JAMES LAW caught up with drummer Chris Tomson midway through their extensive world tour and discovered a band that was looking forward to the end of its long weekend.

Music journalists routinely fall over themselves when they try to describe the music of Vampire Weekend. The myriad of labels placed on them includes African pop, post-punk indie, Ivy League rock, preppy punk, Afro-Caribbean classical and, I kid you not, “gleefully polyglot pop”. The band have even cheekily referred to their sound as Upper West Side Soweto. But a comment from the New York City band’s drummer, Chris Tomson, goes a long way towards explaining how these disparate influences find such a happy home in their music.

“We’re of the Internet generation and we grew up with [file sharing program] Napster,” he says. “We’re all just kind of musical omnivores.We listen to punk, or classical, or African stuff. Whatever.”

Indeed, the web has been integral to the story of this remarkable four-piece. The band – completed by singer and guitarist Ezra Koenig, keyboardist and guitarist Rostam Batmanglij and bassist Chris Baio – met at New York’s prestigious Columbia University. Influential file-sharing blogs picked up their demo in early 2007 and their status as the buzz band du jour was established. The hype from the blogosphere gave Vampire Weekend a leg-up most bands would kill for. For example, they were the first band to appear on the cover of Spin magazine before they had released an album.

Their self-titled debut album, which was released early in 2008 by well-respected label XL, was lavished with critical acclaim and went on to peak at No. 17 on the Billboard 200 chart in the US, at No. 15 on the UK albums chart and in the top 40 in Australia.

Along with hype comes inevitable backlash and Vampire Weekend were criticised as being privileged Ivy Leaguers who had success handed to them. But Tomson is keen to point out that the band paid their dues.

“This is the only time I’ve been in a band but [our rise to success] felt very natural to me,” he says from San Diego, midway through their world tour. “At the beginning we did a US tour in a mini-van when not a lot of people came to our shows and we went through sleeping on friends’ floors.

“People have the right to assume what they like I guess. Musically, we have always been sure of ourselves, then when kind of let others make their own judgements.”

The dust had barely settled on their first album when they dropped their second LP, Contra, early this year, an effort that set in concrete their status as indie darlings. So with such a whirlwind since coming to prominence, when can we expect album number three?

“I think there’ll be a little more time before our next album,” Tomson says, “for our physical and mental health. We’ve had three or four years of straight working.”

The four look forward to taking some time out when their tour winds up in December.

“We definitely could use a break to refresh us. But it won’t be years and years. We still want to prove ourselves and make an album people are excited about. We just want a few months to relax and not have Vampire Weekend be the driving force.”