Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on October 2010
Photo courtesy of Creativeman
Although my rock group never achieved anything like the success of Vampire Weekend—our climax was opening for Meatloaf—we were both a part of the band scene at Columbia University in New York.
It turns out Vampire Weekend had some hiccups along the way, too. “There was an alliance of bands who shared a practice space called Columbia Music Presents, but the person in charge neglected to renew the charter,” recalls keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij in an interview at this summer’s Fuji Rock Festival. “By the time we started, there was no practice room we had access to, so we had to use our drummer’s credit card to jimmy the lock. That was our first rehearsal.”
Despite such inauspicious beginnings, Vampire Weekend has gone on to become the darlings of the indie rock world. Along the way, the creator of the website Stuff White People Like dubbed them the “world’s whitest band”—which is kind of ironic when you consider that their self-styled “Upper West Side Soweto” sound draws heavily from Afrobeat.
“We’d all been interested in African music to different extents, but the idea of using it in the band was something that happened at the beginning,” explains bassist Chris Baio. “It was a way we could go outside the box of standard instruments that we started on.”
On songs like “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,” the group readily acknowledges the heavy influence of Afrobeat and Paul Simon’s Afro-inspired Graceland album. But unlike Simon’s meditations on hope and adversity, Vampire Weekend use African melodies as a sunny foil for ironic commentaries on 21st-century lifestyles.
And even while acknowledging the Afro influences, the group is a bit miffed at the way they’ve been labeled an Afrobeat band. “We’ve never been able to understand why people describe us that way, other than it’s a catchy turn of phrase and there are elements of African pop in our music,” says Batmanglij. “But Afrobeat is about horns and a groove and the Dorian mode. Every Afrobeat song is in the Dorian mode, and we don’t have a single one.”
Sitting across the table in the press area on a sunny Saturday morning, Batmanglij and Baio are rubbing their eyes awake after flying in the night before from South Korea. They had just performed at the Jisan Valley Rock Festival, which provides one-half of a doubleheader for bands on the Fuji Rock bill.
The Korean audience sounds remarkably different than Fuji’s politely enthusiastic masses. “The crowd looked like they were on speed or something,” says Baio with a gasp. “There were these dance circles and they would get super rowdy—it was really cool.”
Vampire Weekend’s first trip to Japan was for Summer Sonic 2008. “I had no idea about the summers, and it was just so, so hot,” says Batmanglij. “Playing to an empty baseball stadium in the middle of the day was weird, but what there was of the crowd was really good. And it was great to be able to go to the other side of the planet and play music.”
Following Fuji, the band has a few weeks off to chill out. Will they get to work on a follow-up to this year’s Contra? “We gave so much to Contra, going into the next one we need some time,” Batmanglij answers. “We don’t have new songs yet, but we always collect ideas. Making Contra, a big part was sharing ideas that we’d collected over about two years, because it takes time to sit with something and say, ‘This is a really good idea and this has got to be on the album.’”
The one thing you can say for sure about their next release is that it will be ambitious. “Hopefully, all the records we release will explore distinct thematic and lyrical ideas,” Baio says. “That’s a goal, and I think as we make more records we’ll be able to go more extreme in terms of the confines. We could make an album that’s just acoustic, for example, after we make a third record—or just an electronic record.”
As Vampire Weekend prepare for their fourth visit to perform on what will be Baio’s 26th birthday, they can rest assured that Japan has taken them to heart—the locals affectionately cal them simply “Vampire.” “Sometimes they’ll translate it literally—kyuketsuki no shumatsu,” Baio says. “I guess any shorthand is fine: Vampire, VW, Weekend—it’s all cool with me.”
Vampire Weekend Indie rockers from NYC. Oct 29, 7pm, ¥6,300. Studio Coast, Shin-Kiba. Tel: Creativeman 03-3462-6969.
