Ah! Vampires!

Published February 5, 2008

By Sally Wiebe

My mom introduced me to Vampire Weekend. She had read a short piece on this quartet of New York City guys in Vogue and became intrigued. She then asked me, the more iTunes-friendly member of the family, to download some of their songs. The qualifier “some” describes just how many songs I could download, but those seven songs were enough to keep me listening to this new group.

Most who listen to Vampire Weekend categorize them as Indie, but the best part of these four prepsters is that they borrow beats from many different types of music, most notably Afro-Pop. On their MySpace page Vampire Weekend lists their music under “Punk/New Wave/Classical”, and they describe themselves specifically as specialists in “Upper West Side Soweto”, a style of music generally credited to Paul Simon.

Many reviewers describe the band’s songs as paying modern respect to Simon’s 1986 “Graceland” album, his most popular here in the U.S. “Graceland” helped to introduce Afro-pop in this country, referring to its South African urban, electric dance beats. Vampire Weekend pays homage to Afro-pop’s identifiable bass playing, drumming, and rattling of guitar sounds. Very telling of the world beats in their lyrics is when guitarist Ezra Koenig, sings on the “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” track, “This feels so unnatural/Peter Gabriel too.” Peter Gabriel pioneered, endorsed, and propelled world music. The band also borrows a bit from the Talking Heads’ later albums.

Ezra Koenig, Rostam Batmangli, Christopher Tomson, and Chris Baio make up, respectively, the guitar, keyboards, drums, and bass of Vampire Weekend. They came together to form the band in early 2006, just as they were all finishing their education at Columbia University. They grabbed their name from a movie Koenig made in his freshman year at the New York City Ivy League. Before signing with the Indie label XL Records this past fall, “studio” locations for recording their songs ranged from their dorm rooms at Columbia to a family barn. This past summer the guys took on the music scene with a series of live shows in and around the city where VW originated. Several performances were at the New York’s CMJ Music Marathon, a distinguished music and film festival.

Writers from both Rolling Stone magazine and The New York Times describe the sound of Vampire Weekend as simple but sophisticated. This is the band you play for the first time one day, and the second time a month after that. You will remain wholly attracted to the pop sounds mixed with refined lyrics such as, on the song “Walcott,” about wanting to leave Cape Cod, “Lobster’s claw is sharp as knives/Evil feats on human lives/The Holy Roman Empire roots for you.”

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