2 Jun 2019

Vampire Weekend's Father of the Bride

From New Horizons, 5:00 pm on 2 June 2019

William Dart enjoys the admittedly self-conscious brilliance of Vampire Weekend's much anticipated new album, Father of the Bride.

Vampire Weekend, 'Harmony Hall', video still

Vampire Weekend, 'Harmony Hall', video still Photo: Vampire Weekend, Columbia Records

I well remember, a decade and a half ago, reviewing Peter Maxwell Davies’ Naxos Quartets. I was rapt, positively subsumed by what I heard. Not only with each of the ten quartets, but also the journey taken through the whole set. 

I settled in with my first CD as one might with an un-put-downable novel and the music took over. Here was a witty, urbane composer weaving stories for me with his themes and well marshalled textures – I was hooked.

And all this was achieved within a traditional musical genre that the once firebrand Davies, back in the 1960s, would have scorned.

In fact, when he first visited New Zealand in my student days, he was, like the French composer Pierre Boulez, all for burning down opera houses and the musical establishment. But, by 1980, returning with his chamber group The Fires of London, Max was far less radical. In fact, symphonies, concertos and sonatas peppered our conversations.

And a truly magical moment eventuated, at an impromptu party that I threw for him. Mid-evening, he sat down at the piano, surrounded by a circle of my music students, cross-legged on the floor, and unlocked the mysteries of a Schubert sonata.

Engagement on such an intense level is not limited to sonatas and symphonies, however. Something of the same thing happened for me back in 2008 when the first album by the American band Vampire Weekend came into my hands. It was a set of songs by young men, determined to scoop me up and take me on board and bewitch me with their stories and tales.

And track to track, through all eleven of them, it was impossible to resist the persuasive way in which these musicians almost wrote with sound.

It soon became clear that language was very important to them. One of the most striking numbers took, as a pretext for a subject, the Oxford comma.

The four men were still students at Columbia University at the time, and the shadow and spirit of academia backgrounds a song titled 'Campus', a saga of thwarted love between teacher and student, set against bass-man Chris Baio’s scampering scales.

I was a convert on the spot, impatient for Vampire Weekend’s second album, which came out in 2010. And before a note was played, its very title, Contra, set up myriad meanings, word-plays, and associations in my mind.

I remember the English press at the time being almost overwhelmed by these Americans' music. For Gareth Grundy of The Observer, Vampire Weekend represented a generational change to pop culture; his comment put into sharp relief by the status of the Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen in the UK at the time.

Contra was, in a sense, a celebration of leaving school for the group and trying to deflect some of the pre-conception that this was music self-consciously written for the cognoscenti.

They certainly knew their music well. Ezra Koenig of the group talked about the influence of his parents’ LP collection, in which The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper sat alongside Grandmaster Flash and King Sunny Ade.

But then there always was a strong Afro underlay in the first two Vampire Weekend albums, here underpinning a song that, nine years on, has lost none of its urgency.

If Vampire Weekend’s 2010 album marked their individual turf on the indie rock scene, then, within three years, changes would happen

Vampire Weekend’s third outing, Modern Vampires of the City, proved just as compulsive as the band’s previous two. But there was something new afoot.

The earlier freneticism, never less than elegantly handled, was toned down from the opening number, 'Obvious Bicycle'.

Lyrics might be as opaque as ever, but its ambling shuffle isn’t grafted onto a shuddering beats underlay until halfway through the song.

For some of us, this number came with other associations as well, being first aired live at New York’s historic Roseland Ballroom, just a year before it was closed.

The new cool of Modern Vampires of the City was best heard in its final track, 'Young Lion'. Taking up your time for less than two minutes, it’s a real envoi, a summation of new identity.

It’s set in a naif baroque mould, with Chris Baio’s imperturbable bass and Ezra Koenig’s piano ornamentations set against the angelic voices of their bandmates.

There had been considerable shifts made in Vampire Weekend’s third album. The band’s dependency on driving Afro rhythms had been replaced by a wider spectrum of experimentation. Perhaps the fact that songs were written, we’re told, during sound checks on tour, made for the palpable sense of discovery that hangs over the set.

Modern Vampires in the City was a success. The American critic Robert Christgau ticked it off with an A+ rating, comparing it to Sgt. Pepper.

Here was music, he commented, in which it’s just as rewarding to delve into detail as it is to sit back and appreciate the architectonic whole.

But where to from here? It had taken Vampire Weekend three years to move from second to third base in terms of albums; how long would it be before a fourth was claimed?

In the meantime there were a few oddities, one of which was recorded for a Starbucks venture, a 2014 album featuring various singers and bands coming up with a song for Valentine's Day.

Vampire Weekend’s decision to cover 'Con te Partirò' ('Time to say goodbye') was unexpected to say the least, and, to some, mystifying.

This mushy Italian love song, written by Francesco Sartori and Lucio Quarantotto, became a major hit for the Italian MoR tenor, Andrea Bocelli.

With Vampire Wekkend, however, there are no banks of slushy strings or operatic warble. Ezra Koenig delivers it lean and, dare I say, a mite lifeless, over the top of a twitching, almost militaristic reggae.

It’s weird. But then, it was probably meant to be.

Vampire Weekend’s new album, Father of the Bride, has fanned up such anticipation that a raft of journalists has swooped in, trying to coax Koenig to open up his soul.

Gentleman’s Quarterly nabbed him in a sun-filled Los Angeles studio. He confessed that the making of the new album had been idyllic but was cagey about specifics. There was talk of characters we met in earlier albums now appearing again, having matured through weathering the darkness of Modern Vampires in the City.

Whatever, at 58 minutes, with 18 tracks, it’s certainly a generous dollop of music and, yes, you can zoom in on filigree or zoom out for the full picture.

Perhaps like me you’ll be so beguiled by the very strange wedding song that opens the album, you won’t want to leave until some resolution has taken place.

'Hold You Now' is one of three duets between Koenig and Danielle Haim, separated and signed off by strange hymn-like choruses, the whole song being deliberately distanced by gaping gaps of silence between its components.

If that song is just a little creepy around the edges, Koenig does deal out lashings of sunlight throughout the album, even if the golden glow that ensues is sometimes a tad ironic.

But then maybe ruminations on pain and rain can be lightened by a pepped-up south-of-the-border setting, complete with Rolling Stone whoops.

I described Father of the Bride as a generous helping of Vampire Weekend’s music, focusing this time very much on its singer-songwriter Ezra Koenig.

Even the doubting Thomases out there, less ready than me to surrender to Koenig’s hour-long tour, would have to acknowledge the sheer energy fuelling the trip.

Along the way, Koenig delivers more than a few hints at the music of those who have gone before.

Perhaps, like me, you might suffer a passing lapse in concentration when a familiar phrase or chord sequence has you puzzling. But everything passes in due course and you’re quickly drawn back into the flow.

And maybe all you need to know about Koenig’s adventures as Mr Cool in a song titled 'How Long', is that it admits to using elements of that 1979 soul classic by The Whispers titled 'And the Beat goes on'. And it certainly does.

Danielle Haim is not the only guest on Vampire Weekend’s Father of the Bride.

Another is Los Angeles guitarist Steve Lacy (not to be confused with the late jazz saxophonist of the same name). Lacy’s there as a soul man, and you’ll catch him on the band’s video for the song 'Sunflower'.

Visually, it’s a disorientating split screen affair, in which Lacy and Koenig wander indeterminately in a spinning universe all of their own.

Musically, though, despite touches of casual commentary on the side and passing sirens, it’s a sharp encounter, with its spot-on unison instruments later vocalized with be-bop trimmings.

And it’s just one of the stories in Vampire Weekend’s compulsively absorbing book of new tales. 

Music Details

'Song title' (Composer) – Performers
Album title
(Label)

'Naxos Quartet No 2' (Maxwell Davies) – Maggini Quartet
Naxos Quartets Nos. 1 and 2
(Naxos)

'Piano Sonata in C minor D958' (Schubert) – Alfred Brendel
The Last Three Piano Sonatas
(Philips)

'Campus' (Batmanglij) – Vampire Weekend
Vampire Weekend
(XL)

'Giving Up The Gun' (Batmanglij et al) – Vampire Weekend
Contra
(XL)

'Obvious Bicycle' (Batmanglij, Koenig) – Vampire Weekend
Modern Vampires Of The City
(XL)

'Young Lion' (Batmanglij, Koenig) – Vampire Weekend
Modern Vampires Of The City
(XL)

'Con te partiró' (Sartori et al) – Vampire Weekend
Sweetheart 2014
(Hearmusic)

'Hold You Now' (Koenig, Zimmer) – Vampire Weekend
Father Of The Bride
(Columbia)

'This Life' (Koenig et al) – Vampire Weekend
Father Of The Bride
(Columbia)

'How Long' (Koenig et al) – Vampire Weekend
Father Of The Bride
(Columbia)

'Sunflower' (Koenig) – Vampire Weekend
Father Of The Bride
(Columbia)

 

Get the RNZ app

for easy access to all your favourite programmes