Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Ezra Koenig (Part 1)

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

Ezra Koenig is the lead vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter of the band Vampire Weekend. He co-founded the group in 2006 while attending Columbia University. Vampire Weekend has released several critically acclaimed and commercially successful albums, blending indie rock with elements of world music. Beyond his work with Vampire Weekend, he is the creator and host of the radio show “Time Crisis” on Apple Music’s Beats 1. He has collaborated with various artists across different genres, such as Major Lazer, Charli XCX, and Beyonce, notably co-writing and co-producing the song “Hold Up” on Beyoncé’s critically acclaimed album “Lemonade.” He has been involved in various other creative projects, including an animated series called “Neo Yokio,” which features the voice talents of Jaden Smith, Jude Law, and Susan Sarandon, among others, and premiered on Netflix in 2017. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: LMNT Electrolytes https://drinklmnt.com/tetra ------ Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra ------ Lucy https://lucy.co/tetra ------ House of Macadamias https://www.houseofmacadamias.com/tetra

Tetragrammaton. music Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. music Tetragrammaton. It really was, you know, at the buzzer, like the final semester of college, and I think

I was starting to have some anxiety about like, you know, what am I going to do? I didn't have a ton of direction the way that some of my peers did. And I had this, I don't know, I had this name Vampire Weekend for a while, but that was the first time we got together and and we had like a rehearsal, and it was the original four members, and we played a battle of the bands. That's when it became a real band, I guess. Did the band come together for the battle of the bands

or it already existed? It kind of came together. We'd all known each other, and maybe in different capacities had done music, but at that moment, and maybe we all had it, but I certainly had this feeling like, kind of need to start something more legitimate, but also there was a vibe.

I had this idea for a kind of like preppy band, you know, and I even like wrote a little bit about it to organize my ideas, and luckily, you know, I found the perfect collaborators, people who took those ideas and ran with them, and yeah. And also there were a couple songs. And the song I always think of as kind of the first Vampire Weekend song was Oxford Comma,

because I'd written it in the months before the band started, and it so clearly to me represented what the band might be. You know, so we played it at our first rehearsal, and it felt like everything from the title of the song to the vibe, it just kind of felt like, all right, this is, it's not just, hey guys, wanna be cool to jam together? It had a vision.

How seriously did you take the idea of the band? Did you think this is gonna be my full-time job or did you think this is a fun project? It was somewhere in between. I don't know, both of my parents were interested in art, are artistic people, but both very down to earth and kind of real about working and money and stuff like that.

So when I think back to that time period when the band started, I had this funny feeling both of, you know, like a lot of people in college, I got to kind of just chill out for a few years. And then suddenly I realized, oh, I'm not gonna have health insurance when I graduate. You know, that was going away. I hadn't really thought about it. And then I realized, oh, right, I need to gonna have health insurance when I graduate. You know, that was going away. I hadn't really thought about it.

And then I realized, oh right, I need to get a real job. And I have this distinct memory in that time period of, it's funny because at that time, a lot of people were going to work at Lehman Brothers, which famously went bankrupt a year later. But I remember hearing, you know. Was it one year later? It's right when Van Brayden was starting. It was right in that era. And so I remember all these people were gonna go back and do it later. But I remember hearing, you know. Was it one year later?

It's right when Vampiric was starting. It was right in that era. And so I remember all these people were gonna work at Lehman Brothers, and I remember hearing people saying like, you know, they get $10,000 as a signing bonus. I'd never heard of signing bonuses. I weirdly maybe didn't even know who the Lehman Brothers were,

but I remember thinking like, oh wait, I gotta get a job, and you know, I became a teacher. So anyway, that's all to say that I probably had some feeling that now was the time to try to do something artistic. But also, I still got a real job as we did it. So I guess I was hedging my bets. And I'm thankful for it because I was actually reflecting on that recently.

There's probably some universe. My parents, they lived a 30 minute train ride from Penn Station in northern New Jersey. There's probably some universe where I could have said, I'm not going to go teach eighth grade. I'll sleep at my parents' house, crash with friends in the city and we'll get this going. But instead I did both and it was probably, it was for the best because I would go teach all day in Bed-Stuy and then at the time, Rostam and CT lived in Greenpoint. I just remember that because the only way to get

from Bed-Stuy to Greenpoint was to take a bus so I'd always be on the bus, go sit in front of the computer with Rostam all night and come back, wake up early. Probably some of the most tired I'd ever been in my life in that period, but it was good that I had both those things. In the early days of the band, was there more time with instruments in a room

looking at each other and playing, or more time sitting in front of a laptop and programming music? No matter what, there was always more time in front of a laptop, but the first album and the sound of that album came from four people sitting in a room together. Debatably, that's the only album that came from that, and that's why it has the sound

and the vibe. But yeah, we were in rehearsal spaces, and whatever we may have added or futzed with later, you know, every song on that first album has live drums, live bass. We hadn't departed from that yet. So even if we still spend a lot of time thinking and rethinking the arrangement in front of the computer, it came out of more of a classic Four Guys in a Room. And would it have been recorded ever classically with Four Guys in a Room or always recorded bit by bit?

Always recorded bit by bit, but that was just partially like just made the most sense to do it that way. Like, oh, let's try to get the drums down and then, you know, just have separation because we were recording in pretty small studios. Tell me about your experience in school. Well, I think I had a sense that I needed to work hard and go to a good college. And so, by the time I got to high school, I knew how to go for it. And I knew how to, I didn't always get good grades,

but when I felt like it mattered, I could go hard and get good grades. So then, for whatever reason, ambition or snobbery or something, I wanted to go to a good grades. So then I, you know, for whatever reason, ambition or snobbery or something, I wanted to go to like a good school. And Columbia felt like the right mix because it was a good school, but it was also in New York. And you know, when I was a baby, my family lived on the Upper West Side

and my grandparents lived in the Bronx. And you know, so living, I felt connected to the city, but I grew up growing up in the suburbs, I still had this feeling I gotta get back. So I had this kind of, I know, so living, I felt connected to the city, but growing up in the suburbs, I still had this feeling I got to get back. So I had this kind of, I guess, academic ambition to go to a good school. And then once I was there, the drive kind of vanished. And I realized as much as I enjoyed AP biology in high school, I wasn't going to go study or be pre-med.

And then I realized I actually had no idea what I wanted to study. So I knew some people who became English majors, and I thought, all right, that's something. And was that more writing or literature? Literature. And one cool thing about Columbia, they have this core curriculum,

so you have to read Plato and Aristotle, so you get a pretty old- school classical education. But again, that's why by the time I got to the end, I felt like, all right, I'd met some cool teachers, I'd read a few cool books, but I hadn't specialized in anything. So I think I did have a pang of self-criticism by my senior year where I was like, wait a second, these people know how to like trade stocks and these people are about to go become doctors? Like, what did I just do? And I felt a little bit like a goofball

and I didn't even major in music either. I took some music classes and you know, I like theory up to a point, but I guess I didn't feel passionately about anything in particular. That's why English literature was kind of fun because you do some 18th century poetry and some post-colonial stuff.

And it was like a smattering of this and that. Sounds good. Yeah, I enjoyed it. You said some songs were hanging around. When did you first start writing songs? I started writing songs when I was probably like nine or 10, because I do have some old tapes, because I had a little kind of like dictaphone, old school tape recorder.

So I remember writing songs and I remember actually, the first time I would think about chords and lyrics, that's probably nine or 10. My first song was a song called Bad Birthday Party, and somewhere I actually like wrote down the words and the chords. And then, you know, I had bands. I remember being 13 and having a band that played at our seventh grade graduation. And we played Sunshine of Your Love by Cream. My friend Wes, his brother was super into U2, so we

covered one. And then we did one original, which is a song that I'd written called The Beast from the Sea, which was like a rock lobster satirical surf song. I had this crew of guys including Wes who went on to start this band, Ra Ra Riot. We were always recording and messing around. So yes, songwriting was always there, and that's why there were little riffs messing around. So yeah, songwriting was always there. And that's why there were like little riffs lying around. And there were some songs that became,

that were on the first Vampire Weekend album, like Brynn and I Stand Corrected, that I wrote when I was like a freshman. So I was like 18, 19 maybe. What would you have been listening to in the days of your seventh grade band? I was a little bit precocious as a record collector or a music nerd.

Even then? Even at 13, because I remember it was a big deal for me that when I had my bar mitzvah, which you're 13, right? So I was 13, and I remember one of my big treats was that my mom's old friend, David Forbes, took me record shopping in Manhattan. So I remember I had like a whole list

of things I wanted to get and- Remember what store you went to? We went to a bunch of stores. We went to the, I was so into Ska at the time, we went Moon Ska, which was, I don't know if it still exists, but it was an independent record label. They had a little storefront, so I think I went there and bought like the Toasters or Mephistofilis.

And then I remember, I think we went to the Virgin Megastore and one of the Tower Records, maybe that one on the Upper West Side, which at the time, I still think about that. It feels like such a dream, being in the giant Virgin Record megastore. But I remember on that trip, that was a huge haul for me. Because I might have gotten like eight CDs.

CDs weren't cheap back then, so I'd have like my mom stranding me, oh I'll drop a couple hundred bucks. It's insane. So I remember at the time I was interested in, for whatever reason, somebody had mentioned Sun Ra to me, so I wanted to get a Sun Ra CD. Maybe I just saw a picture of him and he looked cool. So I remember getting some like 60s Sun Ra CD, and then I remember getting some like a

60s ska compilation, because you know, like a lot of people in the 90s, I was hearing the third wave stuff, and then to get a 60s ska compilation that had, you know, the Tide is High by the Paragons or the, you know, the first ska version of Red Red Wine by Tony Tribe, which was like, I was obsessed with that. So, yeah, I was kind of interested in some old music already at that time. How do you think you were hearing about it? How did you know to look for those things? Were you online yet? Was there online yet?

There was America Online. So there was something. Well, yeah, there were chat rooms and things like that. Did you have music nerd friends? In seventh grade, yeah, I was starting to a bit. I mean, also, I was lucky that my parents had a good record collection. And the records

were prominently displayed in our dining room. So I would look through my dad's records, and he had very good music taste, and he bought records right up to the point when I was born. I remember having a mix of kind of a pride and slight sadness, and now I look at it as just how life works, where I realized that the absolute newest record my dad had was the first run DMC record and I'm like, oh right, because then I was born and then now this guy's working his ass off, probably not thinking too much about new music. But I was like, that's a pretty good run up until, you know, the mid-80s. He had all the Madness and Specials records, so I'm sure I must have had some conversations

with him about what's the roots of this music. And then I think I was also very interested in surf music, which 100% would have been because of, like, how big the Pulp Fiction soundtrack was. So I knew a lot of kids who maybe had that. I probably just went one step further, where I was like, I want to hear more music by Dick Dale, and, you know, I want to hear other stuff from that era.

Was it hard to find at that time or no? I mean, I don't know if I was particularly lucky just where I grew up in northern New Jersey, but short trip into the city, and, you know, if you have some cool uncle figure taking you around, and you could go to the Tower Records or the Virgin Megastar, and if you said, like, I'm interested in surf music, they had a surf music section, which is incredible. and you could have some cool uncle figure taking you around and you could go to the Tower Records

or the Virgin Megastore and if you said like, I'm interested in surf music, they had a surf music section, which is incredible. And then even where I lived in New Jersey, there were specialty record stores. Within two miles of my house, there was a place that was a punk rockabilly record store called Let It Rock, I think.

And there was a kind of just funky everything, the store called Crazy Rhythms. Oh, and one other thing I might say is that I had the good fortune to grow up in the broadcast radius of WFMU, which was a independent station, and then WSOU, which was the Seton Hall radio station. So for whatever reason, it focused on heavy music. I have no idea why, like, a college station would focus so much on, like, hardcore and metal and stuff, but so there's a lot of interesting stuff.

But also they had, like, old-time American music. Like, I first heard The Blasters on that station. On W. Yeah, SOU. SOU. There's weirdly, with specificity, WFMU had a show called Reggae Schoolroom on Sunday mornings. Again, now I look back and realize how unusual that was that you might just put on the radio and hear somebody going deep on Jamaican music. I feel like there was a show called Three Chord Monte.

That was all like rockabilly and 60s stuff. Do you ever get into Don K. Reid who did the doo-wop show? Oh, I wonder because also do you remember there was WCBS FM with cousin Brucie and for all I know that might be my biggest influence because you know, I was a kid in the nineties, so the fifties weren't that far away. I don't think there's probably any station in New York that's routinely playing old school stuff. Like I listened to WCBS FM more than I would listen to K-Rock or whatever. I mean I listen to that too.

I had transitioned into it but WCBS FM I remember being like incredibly moved by Earth Angel or what's that song called that goes, because I want a girl. I just remember finding it like so moving. Oh, Dream Lover. Dream Lover and Earth Angel. Right. I love. And you know the Plasmatics did a cover of that. Oh really?

Yeah, and actually I remember hearing about the Plasmatics. I think my mom lived in the same building as them or something. Yeah, but I loved all that stuff. In fact, I remember being a kid when Pearl Jam had a hit cover of Last Kiss. I just remember being like, I prefer the original. Just because I was so familiar with the original Last Kiss because I loved all that 50s and 60s

stuff. You said you had the name Vampire Weekend floating around. Yeah, it's funny because it's not a particularly good name. It's not something you've got to hold on. It's memorable. Well, it's memorable. Yeah, it's worked because it's not a particularly good name. It's not something you gotta hold on to. It's memorable. Well, it's memorable. Yeah, it's worked. In that same kind of college era before the band started, at some point I was home for the summer and my friends and I made a kind of vampire backyard movie, like camcorder kind of thing.

And that was totally stupid and silly. But there was one part of it, you know, who knows why? At that age, we found it so funny that there was a line in the movie where a dying father says to his son, you need to go to Cape Cod and tell the mayor that vampires are taking over the country. Just the idea, this is so stupid, but the idea that Cape Cod, which obviously has many

towns but that Cape Cod would have a mayor, that still appeals to me somehow. There's something funny about Cape Cod having a mayor. So somehow that formed this connection with Cape Cod where I'd been a handful of times as a kid growing up and somehow Vampire Weekend and Cape Cod kind of stayed together in my mind and then I started adding the preppy element, and who knows why all those things made sense together. Maybe the weekend part, more than the vampire, kind of fit this idea of-

The Cape Cod. Cape Cod and vacation vibes. And was the preppy element just, that's how you dressed, or you saw it as a style statement? It was kind of both. My family was not a prep school kind of family at all. My friends and I, you know, I guess in a sense we were pretty traditional kind of like indie types

in that we liked going to thrift stores, listen to Belle and Sebastian go to thrift stores. And I just found when we'd go to thrift stores and I would see Lacoste and Isolde stuff from the 80s, I was really drawn to it. And I would buy those polo shirts for $4. And then at some point I wanted to wear boat shoes. At the time it was hard to find boat shoes.

I think I thought it was cool. I also remember one of the first bands that I got into before they were well known was the Walkmen. I had a buddy who was like, he had their first hand silkscreen 12 inch or something. And I was still in high school and we went into the city and we saw them open for some band at the Bowery Ballroom.

And I just remember seeing some of them were wearing V-neck sweaters and being like, oh, I like this. And then I remember there were some early press they did where somebody asked them, are you guys, because they actually went, met at prep school and somebody said like, are you guys, so you guys are kind of like a preppy band.

I remember them being like, oh no, no, no, no, we're not. But I remember being like, oh, there's something cool about it. I wonder if you took it further, what that might be like. So I dressed that way, I don't wanna say ironically, but like thoughtfully. And especially back then, it was before the floodgates had opened. I guess this is true of all types of fashion.

But if you wanted to find some cool boat shoes, it wasn't easy. And also, even if you wanted to find a nice, like button down striped shirt, you really had to kind of, like, dig for it. But, you know, the northern New Jersey Goodwills and Upper West Side Salvation Armies are pretty good places to find cool stuff. L-M-N-T. Element Electrolytes. Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? Do you want to maximize your endurance and feel your best?

Add Element Electrolytes to your daily routine. Perform better and sleep deeper. Improve your cognitive function. Experience an increase in steady energy with fewer headaches and fewer muscle cramps. Element Electrolytes.ink it in the sauna. Refreshing flavors include grapefruit, citrus, watermelon, and chocolate salt. Formulated with the perfect balance of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to keep you hydrated and energized

throughout the day. These minerals help conduct the electricity that powers your nervous system so you can perform at your very best. Element electrolytes are sugar-free, keto-friendly, and great tasting. Minerals are the stuff of life. So visit drinklmnt.com slash tetra and stay salty with Element Electrolyte LMNT. So what was the first song that you remember writing that ended up being a Vampire Weekend song? The absolute earliest, and this song was never on an album.

It was on a movie soundtrack, but it's kind of a fan favorite. It's called Ottoman, and that riff I know I wrote in high school. Let's listen to that. Yeah, sure. So the song changed, but I know that riff goes back to about 15 years old. Handsome you're fun that you're lovelier now But dressed for a funeral Begging you to sit for a portrait on the wall To hang in the dark of the band do you bring this song in? That was right after our first album, so it's still like the early days. That might have been one of the first times that we were approached to do a song for a movie.

So naturally, you just put all this energy into making your first albums, and then you're thinking about the second album, and somebody says, oh, do you wanna do a song for a movie? So that's probably why my mind went, you know, I have this riff from high school, and I wanted to build it into something a little bigger. But then when I look back on that riff,

and I think about those days of being 15 and my friend Wes, his dad had a Fender Deluxe and I loved playing through that amp and I realized how much I enjoyed just putting a little bit of reverb on a clean guitar. And I realized, right, there's a connection that fits the early Vampire Weekend stuff. Was guitar always your instrument?

No, I mean, I always, I'd had a guitar from, you know, my tween years, but I started on piano and I've always been way more, for lack of a better word, sophisticated on piano. I'm still learning guitar a bit, but like, if somebody, even just basic music theory stuff, I can think it through better on piano. And when I took piano lessons, and it wasn't amazing,

but I probably reached a place where I could probably play some Bach stuff, where people go, wow, you're really good. Nobody's ever said that to me about guitar. I've never been one of those people where I'm playing guitar riff and be like, whoa, you can play that Joe Walsh lick or something. Whereas with piano, I could occasionally,

my piano teacher made me learn this Schumannann piece called The Prophet Bird and I could play like really fast and cling cling cling. It impressed people. Whereas I'm still waiting for that day to come with the guitar. It may never come. It's crazy how I still just remember the beginning of this piece. I already forgot it. My fingers can move faster on piano. Whereas on guitar I never had that kind of fluidity. And you know, sometimes I can still sight read Bach decently and I sit down and play that. Yeah, and again, it's not like I'm a concert pianist.

No, no, no. But truly by comparison, my guitar playing is so naive. How much time did you spend studying or practicing piano? Well, my parents would say I never practiced because that was a point of contention, like a lot of kids. But, you know, I was routinely taking piano lessons. There were, like, recitals and stuff. And I remember once or twice going to competitions,

and that was so not for me. You know, we played, like, blue-chip stuff, you know? Bach and Schumann. How many years did you study with the teacher? I mean, I don't know, five or something. And then of course we just had a piano at the house always, so it was always just there to kind of mess around on. Did either of your parents play piano?

Yeah, my mom did. How often would she play? Here and there, not constantly, but that was something she enjoyed too, was like reading through Bach and broke music. And I guess also, it's true for a lot of people too, it's just piano is easier to... Even if somebody starts to... told me to play some kind of complicated jazz chord on guitar, I really have to stop and be like, okay, wait, where am I again? Where's piano?

Somebody says flat 11th or something. It's kind of just right there. Do you tend to write on piano? Yeah, I probably write the most on piano and I come up with slightly more interesting harmonic ideas on piano, but then there's always been a thing in Vampire Weekend of these very simple guitar riffs and harmonic ideas on piano. But then there's always been a thing in the vampire weekend of these very simple guitar riffs,

and those start on guitar. Do you always write songs the same way, or do they happen in different ways? Yeah, they happen all different ways. At any given moment to this day, I still have a million voice memos of chord progressions, riffs, little ideas. I have, sometimes they have words that go with them,

sometimes they don't, sometimes I just have a list of phrases I find interesting. So it started with phrases, it started with guitar riffs, it started with samples, basically every possibility. Was the first thing you released an album, or were there anything before an album or were there anything before an album? Was there a demo tape? It's funny because you know coming from like the Pro Tools generation the demo tape was essentially the album. It's not

like we left okay we recorded that and then we went and re-recorded it you know we might have punched it up but we released singles with at least a couple different labels, but yeah, we were from that kind of interesting moment where some version of our album, which we'd sold as a CDR at our shows, was floating around. So by the time we signed a proper record deal, the album was next to done.

Maybe there's like one song left to record, but the album that came out on Excel is very similar to the first thing they heard. So, and I don't even remember at the time, because this is like early days of blog and internet kind of destroying or rebuilding the music industry. So I remember there was like a real concern where it's like, well, your album essentially

has been floating around on the internet for at least a year. Why would anybody buy it? You know, it turned out okay, but those are the types of discussions happening. How different would you say the CDR version was than the album? Maybe, I don't know, 10 or 15 percent different. discussions happening. How different would you say the CD-R version was than the album? Maybe, I don't know, 10 or 15% different. And more mixing or different performances? What would you guess? I think we, I think maybe there's one song,

maybe M79 wasn't there yet, but yeah, I think maybe more thoughtfully mixing, maybe adding a few elements, maybe re-recording some vocals, but not particularly different. And we experimented with going to professional mixers. I remember somebody did a mix of Oxford comma, and they'd change the snare sound. They might have reinforced it by doubling it with what at the time would have been a more typical modern rock radio sound.

Like, you know, because that song, dun dun dun dun dun, I don't know, they just added something. Just remember at the time being like, luckily we all had this instinct, I think, just having this feeling like, you know, that just isn't it. It's whether we're shooting ourselves in the foot

and releasing something that sounds too much like a demo, we have to just more or less do this version. I wonder if we can find the CD-R version on YouTube, because it'd be fun to listen to one song that way. Yeah, it would be called the Blue CD-R version. Okay. I found this old blog post, and there's a download link, which doesn't work

because it's from 2007 but it's interesting because I see the track list and and so that reminds me yes we cut the song Boston from the album which is a really good song we probably could have left it and we added m79 and I stand corrected so yeah it's there is two tracks different. Maybe we can find the missing song. There's Boston Morning Becomes Eclectic, 16 years ago. Okay, yeah, so we would have done it on a radio show, but that's going to be some kind of live thing.

I've never seen this. This will be fun. Okay. I'm gonna go to bed. I've had dreams of Boston all of my life Chinatown between the sounds of the night But if you leave I just don't think you'll take it Take it, take it, take it I don't think we needed to cut this from the first album. Yeah. But I guess it made the first album even shorter and punchier. It's 11 songs versus 12. So maybe it was a good thing Yeah, and who were your contemporaries? Like what were the other bands that you would consider were your

Peer group at that time because we started at Columbia. It didn't particularly feel like we were part of a scene Because like when you're at school, you're you're only you're just there because you go to the same school So there might there be some other bands, but we didn't particularly have a musical scene there. So when later people would talk about MGMT and Animal Collective or bands that lived in Brooklyn as being part of the same scene, I bristled at that a little bit,

maybe just on some pedantic nerd shit, because I kind of felt like, I was like, well, we didn't know them. And then I look back on it and I'm like, you know what? I did know people who went to Wesleyan and I do remember visiting my friend at Wesleyan and there's even some small part of me, I'm like, did I see MGMT?

Like when I was 20? It's possible. I was like over there, getting ripped at Zonker Harris Day, which is some kind of weird Wesleyan tradition. So yeah, now I look back and I was like over there, getting ripped at Zonker Harris Day, which is some kind of weird Wesleyan tradition. So yeah, now I look back and I'm like, these people were contemporaries. The only people I knew

were Dave Longstretz from Dirty Projectors, because I'd randomly met him through somebody at Columbia and I ended up touring with Dirty Projectors playing saxophone in the summer before Vampire Weekend started. So I knew Dave and then I knew another guy named Dave, Dave Maklovich because he had started this band, Chromio, who were kind of bringing back 80s funk at a very unique time.

And I'd seen them open for the streets at Bowery Ballroom and it really blew my mind. Because in the Strokes era, again, it's so hard to picture, but in the Strokes era, seeing these two Canadian guys, one of them was playing a talk box, and who were doing kind of like Roger and Zap type stuff, I can't overstate how unusual that was. Anyway, I saw them, and then the next week I see the singer walk out of the library, and so I went up to him, I was like, I think I just saw you played Barry Ballroom.

He was like, oh yeah, I'm getting my PhD here in French literature. So I knew these two guys named Dave. So looking back, I'm like, yeah, does Vampire Weekend have some shared sensibility with Chromio and Dirty Projectors? Sure. But at the time, it felt more like, well, these are guys I know, these are friends of mine, but are we a scene? I don't know.

But did you feel more like you were a band from Columbia or a band that would play at the Bowery Ballroom? Do you know what I'm saying? If you didn't go to Columbia and you were still living in your parents' house and you played at the Bowery Ballroom, you would think of yourself as part of wherever the bands would play.

That would be what the scene is. Yes. So in that sense, we were a band from Columbia because our early shows were all parties. I don't want to call them frat parties because Columbia's very much not a classic fraternity place, but it has these like clubs that are coeds. There's one called Saint A's, which is actually our first album cover, is The Chandelier there. So our early shows were shows at college. Playing Barry Ballroom was my number one ambition. Like, that was the venue that I'd seen the most shows at

that seemed cavernous to me, like, whoa. You know, Mercury Lounge was kind of like, well, I guess if you played Mercury Lounge and got all your friends to come and feel full, but Barry Ballroom was the one. It was like you made it. Yeah, but Barry Ballroom was the one. It was like you made it. Yeah, that was like the garden to me.

But no, the early shows were at college. So, and then once you graduated college, we played random shows that we kind of booked ourselves. So we didn't have, oh, and then like I said before, my friend from growing up, Wes, he was at college at Syracuse, he had this band, Rara Riots. So of course I had a connection to them. And a lot of our early shows were in Syracuse, because we knew people in Syracuse.

And then, you know, once we were signed, we did open for Animal Collective at Webster Hall, which was super cool. That felt like something's happening with you, you get to open for like one of the great bands of your time. It didn't feel like some early days, like hey, what's your name? You know, it was just different. ["Square Space"] So much of today's life happens on the web.

Squarespace is your home base for building your dream presence in an online world. Designing a website is easy, using one of Squarespace's best-in-class templates. With the built-in style kit, you can change fonts, imagery, margins, and menus. So your design will be perfectly tailored to your needs. Discover unbreakable creativity with Fluid Engine, a highly intuitive drag-and-drop editor. No coding or technical experiences required.

Understand your site's performance with in-depth website analytics tools. Squarespace has everything you need to succeed online. Create a blog, monetize a newsletter, make a marketing portfolio, launch an online store. The Squarespace app helps you run your business from anywhere. Track inventory and connect with customers while you're on the go.

Whether you're just starting out or already managing a successful brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create and customize a beautiful website. Visit squarespace.com slash tetra and get started today. Did you think of it as a live band or did you think of it as a studio project from the beginning? The beginning had equal doses of both. Like if I picture a very important song from the early days, Apunk, you know, still probably our best known song.

And I think about, OK, how did that song come together? I had a guitar riff. I remember at one point just sitting with CT and playing the riff. He's like, I like that riff. And he started playing drums. And then the whole band got together at yet another practice thing and jammed on that first part. And then somebody's like, well, we need a B section. And then Ross then starts playing the da, da, da, da. It's like, oh, now we got a B section. I start singing over that, and then Bae was doing his thing on bass, and at some point, CT says, what if you go, hey, hey, hey, hey, or something? And I go, okay, I'll do more like, ay, ay, ay.

But anyway, that was, okay, not every song was like that, but that was a very important song that came about through a classic kind of band rehearsal thing. Now, to finish that song, I'm sure there was a lot of time, I can bend picture sitting next to Ross in front of the computer and saying, how does that sound? Or him throwing on the flute sound

and us talking about it and saying, that's cool, that's not cool, all that stuff. So it had the flavor of both because Ross Sam was already so interested in production. And in fact, in some ways our relationship started that way because there's a version of the song Brynn, I don't know if it's lost to time, but when we were freshmen, I remember meeting him

and he's like, I'm into music, I'm into music too. And we talked about bands and at some point I played him the song, Brynn, that I had, and he was like, why don't we record it? Because he was so interested in recording. You played it to him live, like you performed it for him? Yeah, I must have played it on a guitar

because I had the, yeah, like I had the, let's see if I remember it. ["Brynn's Song"] I haven't played it in a while. Yeah, so I must have had... I had that riff and I had this idea for a song, so we must have tried a demo of it. And then I remember later that summer I recorded it back in Jersey with my other friends. But so to me that's symbolic of something which

is that before the band started, you know, he was so interested in recording and production that that was always very present, which was perfect because I'm sure without that, I probably would have lost some interest or something because I've always been slightly more interested in, I don't know, making records has always been the thing that I feel the most connected to. So anyway, in the early days, we had equal doses of both. By the second album, it seemed obvious to me

that we could not achieve what I wanted to achieve if every song started with four guys in a room bashing on instruments. And looking back, I'm so lucky that I had that set of collaborators in that day because there were still times where I could show CT and Bayo a riff and soundcheck and we started grooving like on the song Cousins, where I had this little riff. And they started coming, so again, that kind of just grooving thing.

But then by the same token, at that time, you know, Rostam sending me beats that he made, you know, for lack of a better word, we worked hip hop style. You send me a beat, let me listen to it, let me see what I come up with over it. And I think that kept the band interesting, hopefully for the listeners, but more importantly for us. And then I also started to realize, I remember the song Hannah Hunt, which is one I'd written pre-Vampire Weekend, which didn't come out until our third album. And I remember trying to take it into the studio. We had a really good song written pre-vamp our weekend, which didn't come out until our third album,

and I remember trying to take it into the studio, and I think a lot of people have this feeling, because you don't realize, right, you can make music so many different ways, and if you're a songwriter and you write kind of like a tender, quiet, country-esque thing, and then you go to your kind of indie band bros and say, all right guys, here's a song,

and then you start playing, you start hearing live drums and stuff, it can be incredibly depressing. Nobody did anything wrong. But it's still a bad feeling when you start to realize, wait, I thought this was a good song, but as we jam on it, it just feels so off. And again, then I started to realize what's obvious now,

which is that, yeah, some songs, you start with a bunch of musicians in the room, and some, you don't want a drum musicians in the room, and some you don't want to drum set anywhere in sight because you want to be so quiet and you want to listen to the snare sample off the speakers. So we had to transition into that. It is a normal thing in a band, regardless of the size, where every musician believes they're supposed to be playing all the time.

Right. And no one stops to question that in a band. And that's why you also eventually have to say we can break out into different groups because fair enough, if I'm sitting in front of a guitar all day, I'm gonna noodle on it. If I'm sitting in front of a drum set, I'm gonna do noodle on it. If I'm sitting in front of a drum set, I'm gonna do a little something.

When you're in front of an instrument, you do something with it. And I also had to realize, I was like, right, I can only think straight sometimes when I'm alone or when it's me and one other person. Even to this day, there's certain moments when I'm working with, like, say, Ariel or something and I just realize,

and of course sometimes, he's always had great people working for him, excellent assistants, all of whom I really like, but I started to, even I had to realize this in my 30s where it's like, right, when we're doing drum takes, I want everybody there because we want to troubleshoot, but if it's remotely anything emotional or I want to like really, maybe not even emotional,

I just want to speak from the heart about why I love a certain record and why I hate another one. I clam up if there's anybody else in the room. And that's a huge part of making music. So sometimes you need the instruments to be gone, you need the people to be gone. And of course that's something that takes years to learn. During the process of making things,

do you spend a lot of time listening to references? Definitely, and I spend a lot of time listening to the demos. Like, I realize I'm probably, there's certain demos I listen to hundreds of times. I mean, it's- Of your own demo. Of our own. it's scary to think, but maybe even thousands. Because there might be some little instrumental that we made years ago, and I come back to it

little by little, and I start to get a lyrical idea, or just one day I realize, you know, I always have these crazy ideas too, where I'm like, thankfully we never did any of this, where I'm like, oh and then we'll do three EPs in different genres. And I'm thinking about that for years and I'm listening to them and listening. And then eventually I'm like, I'm insane. That song should just be track one on the next album.

And I only start to realize that with time and from listening over and over again. So I spend so much time listening to our little demos and then yeah, like any musician, I get obsessed with certain songs and then in the studio we play each other stuff. Are most of your demos made in one session? No, they can be all over the place and sometimes I don't really know

which one is good for a long time. I often think too about like, I'm guilty of this too and I certainly have friends and peers who I know do this where sometimes somebody will say like, oh how's the new album going? I'm like, oh it's great, we got seven songs. And they'll play some of them and be like, well these three don't have a lyric yet but I know it's good because whatever, it slaps or the groove. And I've realized, I used to be like that too, have my little instrumentals and be like, well, this is obviously cool, so this will go on the record.

Whereas now I realize, until you have the lyric that seals the deal, you can't move it into that column yet. I think it's okay to believe in it. It's probably good to believe in it. Yeah, you just gotta keep it real a little bit because, and also recognize, to me, it kind of sharp it go. You can just kind of let it go. And then you can just kind of let it go. And then you can just kind of let it go. And then you can just kind of let it go. And then you can just kind of let it go.

And then you can just kind of let it go. And then you can just kind of let it go. And then you can just kind of let it go. And then you can just kind of let it go. And then you can just kind of let it go. And then you can just kind of let it go. And then you can just kind of let it go. And then you can just kind of let it go.

And then you can just kind of let it go. And then you can just kind of let it go. And then you can just kind of let it go. And then you can just turn of phrase that makes it a memorable song, it's essentially worthless. And if that makes you feel down in the dumps, then you shouldn't think that way. But for me, that feels more like, oh right, that's what's so fun about this is that- It is the reality of the situation. Sometimes when artists play the instrumentals,

I have a quizzical look. Right, yeah. I don't know what this is yet. What's next? And by the same token, as unfair as it seems, which sometimes very sophisticated musicians I've heard, you know, can feel like it's a bit unfair, somebody can write the most sophisticated chords with the most interesting production, and then some kind of naive goofball comes in and plays one, four, five, and that turns into the best

song on the album. And that's just how it is. Yeah. Sometimes the technical glitch is what makes it interesting. Do you know what I mean? It's beyond even songwriting what makes it interesting. Yeah, you never know. A cool turn of phrase by itself is not valuable until there's a melody and a set of surrounding arrangements

to make it work. And I always find, too, like, yeah, listening back to songs. Yeah, sometimes I realize I like the song because of that random acoustic guitar thing we forgot to mute that sounds like a little beep, like a brrng. Yeah, you never know. Yeah. Let's listen to something from the first proper album,

just for the story. Sure. Would A-Punk be the best choice, you think? Yeah, I mean, that's definitely the best known song. Okay, let's start with that. ["A-Punk is a Beautiful World"] She's got the ring on his outer finger, oh A thousand years in one piece, she said, what you took it from me? Lily White hat, short long fish,

she'd seen the thing in the young man's wings, don't get her in I'm gonna be a good boy, I'm gonna be a good boy Oh Ay, ay, ay, ay Ay, ay, ay He's got a girl, so I go and seek her And he's gotta go Down to the railroad, I'd sold her to Mexico Got his teeth, doctor calls, I'm on the go

Oh, oh, oh, oh I switched her hand, I'm down in the soul But she took an apartment in Washington Heights I'm a luring lies here with me To the other house at the bottom of the sea Look outside the records come and say oh I guess I'm gonna go school single Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Roof was like the first kind of like Taster single, but that was definitely like a significant single. Would you hear it on the radio? Did you play in bigger venues? Yeah, I mean those early years were just like, it was like a lot of good things happened and you know. Were you on tour in a van? Yeah, we toured in a mini van in the early days, but we were on a bus pretty quick. And yeah, it kind of felt like from, you know,

one year we start the band, next year we sign a record deal. Year after that, the album's out and we... When you sign the record deal, the album is essentially done. Essentially done, yeah. We had to maybe put in a few more. So in the first year, you make the first album. Yeah, and so we had to have, you know,

a few weeks more of work to finish it. Do you play. So in the first year you make the first album. Yeah, and so we had to have a few weeks more of work to finish it. Do you play many shows in that first year or no? A decent number and some very small shows. I felt like we'd hit every step, we just hit them quickly. And then by the time the album came out, we started to have those milestones

that are far beyond the initial ambition of playing the Bowery Ballroom, like play Glastonbury for the first time and people really know the songs. On the first album. Yeah, on the first album. Yeah, like people, you know, big English crowd and they know A-Punk and Oxford Common,

they're singing and all that kind of stuff. And so, you know, going around the world, obviously was pretty novel. And then the show's getting bigger and bigger. How surreal was it? Did it feel like, yeah, this is right, or like, wow, can you believe this? If I really think back to that time, I think I was equally excited by our success

and equally wounded by my first taste of like criticism and like becoming a public facing person. So I guess like with many things in life, it probably netted out to feeling about the same. I guess I figured it out a little bit, but I didn't really know how to like roll with the punches. So even if I didn't sit in anger necessarily all the time, you know, of course, like anybody would be like, read some review or some hater and be like, well, they don't know the first thing like roll with the punches. So even if I didn't sit in anger necessarily all the time,

of course, like anybody would read some review or some hater and be like, well, they don't know the first thing about me or what. Once that would go, it would still linger as anxiety, which is like, well, what if these people are right? What if we are just a buzz band? Are we a, we weren't a one hit wonder in the sense of having a giant hit single,

but could we be a one album wonder? You know, even as I listen back, as you play A-Punk and I think back to it, I can hear that music and say, that's probably what I would have said too, if I'd heard our first album. Not that I don't like it or I'm not proud of it, but I could see like, there's a novelty aspect to it.

It's... Isn't the reason a buzz band is a buzz band is because it's good and people like it? Isn't that part of it? Yeah, but I guess that's also part of the fun is seeing where something can go. And to say, yeah, so this is exciting right now. It's connecting with people, the story of the album,

and a lot of that came from the band dressing preppy and being like, we met at college and there's a collegiate atmosphere. Of course, I thought I was having fun with it and having a satirical element, but even so, it's if something is rooted in kind of youth, you can't blame people for saying, ah, I don't really see this being a long-term thing.

So I think that period was equally kind of fun and anxiety-producing, which, you know, again, I can't, I don't need to tell you how many times, if we both probably had this conversation with musicians and talk about early success, and they're kind of like, yeah, that part was fun, and then that part was incredibly stressful. So we put a lot of pressure on ourselves

to get the second album out quickly. I think, of course, I and everybody in the band had things we wanted to say artistically, but also there was a feeling of like, also probably wanting to prove to people there was more to the story. And I remember having an obsession that I wanted the second album.

The first album came out January 08, and I remember thinking the second album needs to come out in the 2009 calendar year. Who knows why? You know, I had this feeling like, yeah, if we are a buzz band and the sun's setting on us, like let's get something out soon. It ended up coming out January 2010,

which looking back was crazy because we played so many shows in that time. And you had your whole life to write the first album. Right, no, it's very true. And now you're busy promoting the first album and writing and recording the second album. Yeah, 2009 was a stressful year because we hadn't really stopped playing shows.

And I have a memory of everybody being really stressed out or trying to finish the album. And then we had an offer to open for Blur and Hyde Park, which that was very exciting to us. It was big, looked up to Blur, especially to be chosen by them to open in. It's like 70,000 people in Hyde Park. Oh yeah, massive.

It's huge. Yeah, and you know, there's such an iconic band there. But I remember being like, oh right, even to go do one show, when you have to fly to England, that's going to be bare minimum three days of your time, and realistically, a week of your energy.

Probably, yeah. And like, right, and every week counts when you're rushing to finish, you know, and suddenly realizing, oh God, you know, that was an intense time. It has been cherished in tribal wisdom traditions for thousands of years. Indigenous people the world over have used this plant-based compound in spiritual, healing and ceremonial rites and rituals for centuries. More recently it has been shown to increase alertness, improve focus, elevate mood, enhance cognition, heighten reward sensation and more.

We are talking about nicotine. Nicotine is a wonder worker. Inspired by indigenous practices throughout history and guided by a wealth of contemporary research, the team at Lucy set out on a mission to create clean, brain boosting nicotine products for the modern lifestyle. Whether it's their nicotine breakers, parches or gum, Lucy's products are carefully formulated to deliver a pure and potent nicotine experience, free from the undesirable aspects of cigarette smoke. Backed by rigorous research, nicotine is known to amplify cognitive processes, emotional regulation, and modulate the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine.

Experience the power of this natural nootropic by visiting lucy.co.uk and discover next level smoke-free nicotine. Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. On the first album, after playing Glastonbury, would you guys feel like celebratory? Would you high-five? Tell me the energy around the band. Was it just like work? I don't know.

I think everybody was kind of probably like dealing with their own sense of self and probably once it got real, probably everybody had to decide a little bit like, yeah, where's this heading? Cause you know, suddenly the band is taking up a lot of time. So I think everybody was kind of taking it in.

So I think there was mutual excitement. There were certainly moments of like group celebration, but you know, there was also a huge transition happening, going into working on the second album. And like I said, suddenly I'm realizing certain songs are only gonna reach their potential if we don't work on them as a band and I'd had a tiny bit of foresight when the band started I'd been in bands growing up

so I had a tiny bit of foresight when the band started that I could At least say to everybody I want to be the singer when I started this band It's because I want to be the singer not saying I won't be open to other things But you know, I just kind of remember being in seventh grade and every time there's a song, everybody's looking at each other like, well, maybe I could sing this one. And just realizing sometimes it's good to have clarity.

People can have different projects. And I also said early on, I want to have a final say on choosing the songs. Just because I was so obsessed with albums, and again, I had this feeling like, can't be voting on every song, you know, because people are going to have different sensibilities and different points of view. And I'd like to think that I was a, hopefully had enough sense that I would recognize what

was great about somebody else's song or somebody else's contribution. But even then, there's still growing pains that a band has to go through in terms of who does what, to suddenly say, well, these songs maybe won't have real bass or real drums on it. That's a growing pain for everybody. Did you know it in advance or was it more in case by case, you get to a song, this one's gonna be better without the band on it?

I wonder. As a huge music fan and a discography nerd, I imagine if you'd asked me when I was, you know, in my college years, like, what does the arc of a great band look like? I would have reeled off The Beatles and Radiohead and Beastie Boys or whatever, and I would have reeled off The Beatles and Radiohead and Beastie Boys or whatever. And I would have said the bands who I admire the most,

they had drastically different ways of working from album to album, whether that means using live instruments here, orchestral arrangements there, samples. I guess I'd always probably had a model in my head that the artists I liked were never beholden to rules about instruments or arrangements. So I guess I knew that, but I probably hadn't thought about

how does that actually happen. Right. I will say personally, I like it when you hear a song and you know, let's say the artist has 10 albums and you hear a song and you know, let's say the artist has 10 albums, and you hear a song and you know what album it's on, not because you remember which album it's on, but because, well, only that album sounds like that. Right.

I like that. Yeah. Now, I also like the Ramones, and I also like ACDC, and those are exceptions to that rule. Yeah. Yeah, no, if you can be the Ramones or ACDC and you crack such a specific sound on your first album, might as well stick with it.

But even the first Vampire Weekend album, from song to song, you can tell it's a collage. So we had to make a series of different collages. We didn't have one sound to stick with. But yeah, I agree. And even if you go a step further, and it's like not only does it sound that sound could only be that band in that era,

if you can even go a tiny step further and even say, well, that lyric could only be from, I mean, that's like as good as it gets when you realize like, I mean, you know, sometimes you're the beneficiary of huge social change and say like, yeah, I wanna hold your hand versus tomorrow never knows. That makes sense that one,

that those were a few years apart in terms of, yeah, I love that stuff. And deep down, I've never totally known how to put it into words, but that's what I love about music. I've come to enjoy performing live, but I didn't see a show once that blew my mind and said, I wanna be that guy on stage.

You hear stories like that. That was not the case. It was only when I started to look at, for lack of a better word, discographies. That's what got me excited about it. Yeah, the overall output of an artist. Yes, and that's what's cool about whatever era you're born into, not only do you get to watch

the great artists of your generation unfold that story, but you get to look backwards and just see it already. You can go backwards, forwards, sit in the middle for a while. Like, I can picture being like 13, just like sitting in the white album and like letting that world surround me and thinking about they only could have made this after Sgt. Pepper,

and it makes sense that this was before Let It Be. It has to be. You know, like, I love that. So while touring the first album, would you be writing songs while you're on the road? Would you be testing songs at sound check? Yeah, here and there. I remember the song Cousins started as like jamming

that riff in Soundcheck. And then there are other songs like White Sky that Rostam sent me like a 30 second kind of electronic beat that he'd made and I just listened to it over and over again. I started writing a verse and I wrote a chorus and so they were all kind of in play and then maybe I had other songs but when I picture writing on tour it's very rarely like stopping by a studio with some of the guys or even sitting alone with an acoustic guitar. It tends to be more that walking the streets of Brussels jet-lagged

and listening to old demos and suddenly having a little melodic or lyrical breakthrough. That's what I consider writing on tour. If you look at the second album, see if you can imagine what would have been the first song written for it. Yeah, a lot of these songs have some deeper roots. Oh, you know what it is? It's actually giving Up the Gun,

which is probably why it sounds a bit different, because that was a song I'd kind of experimented with in college when I had a little rap group. And I remember, it's like, that was a useful song because it was helping me to realize I probably shouldn't be rapping, but I made a beat. And so that song existed. So that was Pre-Vamp, probably giving up the gun.

But then I remember being like, maybe we should bring that song back. And then Rostam took it and ran with it and built it into something new. But that song probably had the deepest roots. Let's hear a little of it. Your sword's grown old and rusty, burnt beneath the rising sun It's locked up like a trophy, forgetting all the things I've done And though it's been a long time, you're right back where you started from

I see it in your eyes, and now you're giving up the gun When I was 17 I had risked like steel Yeah, much more like... Complete This was like pop, you know, compared to the first album. I don't want to say slick, that's like an overused term, but like... Yeah, not slick, but tight, produced.

Yeah, I don't know, you know? Yeah, definitely more produced. Yeah. And that song maybe is a bit of an outlier on that album, but it's the one with the deepest roots, and also, I guess in some ways, yeah, it reminds me of that period of being like, let's try some different stuff.

What would be the most representative, if you were going to say, this song best represents the album? It's hard to say. When I look at this album, I am struck by 10 tracks, how much ground we covered. There's some punky guitar songs that seem related to the first album. In some ways, maybe track one, Horchata, because that, I remember working on that song a lot in those early years, and I'm pretty sure there's not like a drum set on it.

So in some ways, and I had this feeling that should be track one, so I guess that's because I must have... You wanted it to sound different than the first album. Would you think of it as progress or just different? That's a great question, because you can imagine after doing dozens of interviews to promote the new album,

you're asked to reflect a lot on your discography, and even sometimes you get that backhanded compliment of somebody being like, saying, you really leveled up, even when somebody likes your new work, and they say, you've really achieved something new. It's backhanded. Yeah, what I always felt was that, yes,

it's not progress per se, it's continuing to reveal the whole. So I kind of felt a little, I guess like if you're revealing a map of the US, and then you start it out by just showing a little box that showed LA or something. And if you have confidence and you're familiar with the territory of the United States of America and people say like, all right, well, I get palm trees,

it's sunny, the film industry is based there. And in the back of your head, you're thinking like, right, but eventually I'll show you North Dakota. You know, eventually I'll show you Tallahassee, Florida, whatever. So I always thought of it more that way. And maybe I didn't know how to do it, but if you had asked me even as a high school student

or a college student, say, you know, again, when I'm talking about idolizing the Beastie Boys and Radiohead and the Beatles and whatever, if you had said like do you think Your band might one day make a song that's made in more of a pop fashion or hip-hop fashion Or doesn't have real drums or has a choir or it has an orchestra I'd be like, of course because these are the tools of music and I love all that stuff and we'll figure out a way to Do it you never saw it in a small box. You never saw These are the tools of music and I love all that stuff and we'll figure out a way to do it.

You never saw it in a small box. You never saw four guys playing rock as the limitation of your musical output. Yeah, definitely not. And I think, yeah, that's why the second album is so important because second albums, like you said, are famously hard. You have your whole life for the first one

and then a year or two for the second. But some of these songs that were made in more of a sit in front of the computer kind of way felt like representative of the new approach. Yeah, Horschad especially maybe just felt like a, it felt connected to the first album but felt like this step into a slightly new world. And maybe that's why I always tend to have strong feelings

about track one. Beyond that, I'm not very good at sequencing, but I knew that that should be track one. Let's listen to that. In December, drinking hot chata, I'd look psychotic in a bottle of clava. Winter's cold, it is too much to handle. Pinch of crabs, a pinch at your sandals. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, What's your favorite Paul Simon era?

Ooh, that's a good question. I mean, it varies, but there's definitely a part of me that doesn't want to say Graceland. And yet, to me, that is his most perfect album. It's probably the one that inspires me the most. I mean, I also have these moments where I've gotten, I get very obsessed with the Bridge Over Troubled Water album. And I guess those two are probably his, I'd imagine, his two most successful albums between Simon and Garfunkel and the solo material.

But yeah, that Graceland rhythm of the Saints, I think the truth is that that combination of the sounds, his collaborators, what he was doing lyrically. Embracing world music. Yeah, it is, to me, nothing quite sounds like it. And I think Bridge Over Troubled Water is one of the great albums of that era. But I can think of other folky orchestral music I love,

but there's only one Graceland, you know what I mean? Would you say you felt more stress going into the second album or the first album? Probably the second album. I think the first album, there's a little bit of that ignorance is bliss kind of thing. And it was also novel, whereas by the second album, you get that unfortunate feeling of like,

oh, now I have something to protect. Yeah, and you didn't know anyone would hear the first album. Really. Yeah. And now you know, well, there's a bunch of people who heard that who are gonna hear this. Yes, and I also felt a little bit, again, I don't quite feel like that these days,

and I look back and I have some sympathy slash judgment of my young self for caring so much and being too naive or something to recognize, like, yeah, that's what happens. People are allowed to have opinions. They're allowed to even hate you. It's okay, but you know, that's like hard. They do not hate you, hate your music.

Well, it felt personal at times, because sometimes the way people hate on music is by making it personal. So, you know, so you could call it hating you, and even that you have to eventually accept, Sometimes the way people hate on music is by making it personal. So you could call it hating you, and even that you have to eventually accept, however you get there, eventually you have to accept. So at the time when I think about that feeling of, I imagine going to the second album, I also had this feeling of like the knives were out.

And it's funny too, I think so often when I talk about the albums and stuff, because I am a music fan, you know, I can like nerd out for hours about, you know, classic second albums and how other artists did and what I learned from them and stuff, but the truth is, luckily there's always just kind of an artistic thing that pulls you forward in spite of all these anxieties and stuff. So yes, I felt like the knives were out for us and I felt a sense of wanting to prove something and I wanted to avoid the pitfalls

that a lot of artists have on their second album. But as much as all that stuff was on my mind, it's also you play the hand you're dealt and these are the songs that we had and these are the ideas we had, so we just did it. So in some ways, now I look at it as being like all that stress and worrying. Maybe, who knows, maybe that stress made it 7% better,

or maybe made it a little more thoughtful about, well, now we shouldn't put that out first. Maybe, but I guess the case in point, it's not like I look back and say, well, here's the thing. We had 50 recorded songs, and we painstakingly chose these 10. Those were the 10 we had. So, you know, all this stress, what is it?

Was it a struggle to get to this 10, or did it happen relatively in a natural way? We weren't too far off. There were enough of these songs and ideas that had been floating around for at least, let's say, a year that we, I'd say we more or less had seven or eight that felt just about right. And luckily they worked out, maybe two more came. Thankfully, it wasn't a combination of both the high stakes feeling of a second album and sitting down and being like,

okay, we better start writing because we got nothing. It wasn't that. And then how was it received in general? I think it was received well. I remember some early good reviews, and the shows continued to get bigger. That's a good sign. Yeah, that's a good sign.

If shows continue to get bigger, it's always a good sign. Yeah, and of course, the haters can say you're still coasting off the previous wave, but I've seen enough now that I feel like I can differentiate between the feeling of one versus the other. And like you know when people are reacting to the new material and there's like a new vibe in the air. So yeah, ultimately it felt like it worked.

And you know, looking back at how close those albums were together, it's probably a lot of people were still discovering the first album. Although it is funny because you realize it's interesting when you have five albums and you meet people who found their way in on each album. And as much as you might think, well, Contra, the second album was only barely two years, not even after the first album, so was only barely two years, not even, after the first album, so you can lump those together. But no, I still meet people who I know are like, we actually had some joke with Bayo

about calling people Generation Contra. We just meet a certain type of fan, and I can just tell that the second album was your way, it wasn't the first. They might like all the albums, but I can tell there's that micro generation of people for whom the second was the way in. And ultimately, I feel like as long as each album cracks the door for maybe a new type

of listener, then we've done our job. Welcome to the house of macadamias. Macadamias are a delicious superfood, sustainably sourced directly from farmers. Macadamias, a rare source of omega-7, linked to collagen regeneration, enhanced weight management, and better fat metabolism. Macadamias are healthy healthy and brain boosting fats. Macadamias, paleo friendly, keto and plant-based.

Macadamias, no wheat, no dairy, no gluten, no GMOs, no preservatives, no palm oil, no added sugar. House of Macadamias. By roasted with Namibian sea salt, cracked black pepper, and chocolate dips. Snack bars come in chocolate. Coconut white chocolate and blueberry white chocolate. Visit houseofmacadamias.com slash tetra. What kind of people come to the gigs? Now, describe the audience.

Well, we've only played one real show so far on this album, and we played in Austin during the eclipse a couple weeks ago. That's cool. Also, it'd be my 40th birthday. Happy birthday. Thank you. It was amazing, actually. I didn't realize how intense the eclipse might feel

and also how gratified I was because it was a cloudy day. So we stopped playing during the eclipse and we went backstage, or at least in the parking lot to look up, and you could hear these wild sounds coming from the crowd, people howling at the moon, and it got really dark, like spooky dark. And Bo, you looked up and you couldn't see anything,

and truly in a kind of cosmic way, at the perfect moment, the clouds parted just enough for two seconds to see the moon in front of the sun, and the sound we could hear from the crowd was crazy. Wow. And that was very, it was a very special experience. But I did have, I had a thought in terms of the crowd, looking out at that show in particular,

I really had this sense of like, wow, I'm looking at the whole history of the band. Because I saw people who had, even just in terms of the t-shirts, because I'd see somebody wearing, well, that t-shirt we sold on the first album, and it has a very 2000s indie look. Or look at that person,

they're wearing like a polo button down shirt, they're connected to this preppy thing that is a pillar of the band. But then I'd see people who are maybe the fans of the older fans who are wearing kind of more like riffs on Grateful Dead imagery, which is way more the fourth album. And I just really had a sense I was like looking at the, yeah, kind of just like the whole history of the group. And you see some parents with their kids, and you see some people who you're kind of like, right And you see some parents with their kids,

and you see some people who you're kinda like, right, you must have gotten to us when you were in college, you must have gotten to us when you were maybe middle school, or you even see some people where you're like, whoa, you're way older than all of us. So, you know, it's a nice mix in terms of age range. And I did have that good feeling where I was like, right, we have a body of work now

and looking at it, the crowd, just in terms of the fashion, I can tell people are connected to each era. Would people sing along? Oh yeah, definitely. Lots of singing along. That's good. Yeah, people are singing along from songs from all the different albums,

and that's such a good feeling too, just to know that they work jumping around in time and that you can have some fun with the set list and go from the early days to the middle to the recent. That's a great feeling. Do you feel an obligation to play songs in the way that they were originally recorded live? Up to a point.

We have new people on stage in the band. So recently we had two new guys, Colin and Ray. And at first we were just looking to cover guitar parts, but then Colin is a great saxophonist and Ray is a great violinist and plays pedal steel. So we can't help but have a little, well, would that sound like on violin or would that sound like on sax? And then certain songs, I think, are almost built to play with, so it depends on the song, but yeah, I love having a little bit of fun with it.

How much touring do you do on the second album? So much. I think in 2010, we played 200 shows or something, so that just felt endless, and gratifying up to a point. By the end of that tour, we played our biggest shows up to that point. Maybe by the end of that year, it felt like we could look and say, okay, the second album was officially a success. Again, when you know how the classic sophomore slumped, the biggest fear is to be like, whoa,

that really was a whiplash. It didn't feel like a whiplash. It was like, no, things have continued to grow, felt good, definitely needed to take some time off. Back then, probably even just taking two months to do nothing probably felt like a long time. Today, two months is nothing. I didn't take two years to really feel the effects. But I remember taking a little bit of time off and then,

yeah, the third album, I guess it's true at that point, was probably the longest gap we'd had. So that was three and a half years between albums. So that felt like a long time. And it also felt like to me that it was time to do something really different. This is before anything's written, you had an idea that it's going to be really different than what came before. I mean, but of course there's always these little things hanging out.

Like I said, the song Hannah Hunt, which became an important song on the third album, that predates Vampire Weekend. So there's always stuff like that, but to me that doesn't mean much. It just means that I didn't know what to do with it, so I didn't have the insight. How would you describe the difference in the third album? The simplest way to describe it is that it's darker and more serious. And there's times I bristle to even say that myself because there's always been a part of me that's kind of like the contrarian part of me that wants to say some people just couldn't see the heaviness or the darkness in the early

stuff or some people need to, if the album cover isn't black and white, they're not going to understand, you know, and yet I also, I can see both sides of it where, no, of course, the first two albums have a brightness and a youth and the third album moved into different territory, I might have had the ambitions. Would you say that the territory is more lyrically or sonically darker? Yeah, both. It was definitely going for something different. And again, when I think about these songs that are very emblematic of that album, I

realized, you know what, Step and Hannah Hunt were hanging around for years before that, so what does that mean? But again, it wasn't their time. You can, you know, the best laid plans, right? Things only work not just because you make an artistic intention to say, we should do something a bit darker now, but also you have to be at that space emotionally, otherwise you won't have the ideas to feed it. And so, you know, being,

when I think about what I contributed to that album, being in my late 20s and what I wanted to write about and sing about, it was changing. And so not only did I feel like this is what the band needed to do just in terms of continuing to paint our picture, but it's also just what was happening. So yeah, darker, heavier, I'm sure the average BPM on that album dropped quite a bit. I even remember at the time, even though that album still has some like punky tempos on

Believer's and Dying Young and stuff, I still have a memory of like sitting with a friend just being like, I'm just concerned this album's so kind of slow. But I like those songs. I love the quieter mid-tempo songs, but there was this part of me that kind of felt like, well, we're known for kind of high energy indie stuff. Will this feel boring or lifeless to people?

So it was a concern of mine, not enough of a concern to pull back too much. Yeah. The third album is the one that really caught me. Like that's my way in. Right. There are songs on that album that, yeah, I see the connections between the first two albums, but it's like, you know, if you hear obvious Bicycle or Step versus Apunk, yeah, in that sense, it's incredibly different.

Yeah. What song do you think would be most emblematic of the album? To me, it's always been Step. Again, even though Step had these deeper roots, there's even a time where I had an idea, oh, maybe I'll make a solo album after the second Vampire Weekend album where it'll just be me kind of taking inspiration from random songs I like and rewriting them because this thing is totally inspired by Souls of Mystic, Step to My Girl, which was like, I think, kind of a B-side or a bonus track. It was hard to find back in the day. And then that in turn is built on Grover Washington

doing an instrumental version of a bread song called Aubrey. Of course I know all this stuff because we had to clear the samples. But I had this thought where I was like, oh, that could be like a fun project. It's like- It's a great idea. Ripping on.

It's still a great idea. Yeah. And I still, there's times I still, I'm always open to it. I always think to myself, like, if I find some old song and I like it, like, maybe that'll get me writing something else and it'll become, you know, start co-writing with, I mean, you know, it's hip hop, just a sample. Yeah. A montage.

And you get an idea and make it your own. But there was something about, so Step had been hanging out, but there was something about, and again, it seems so obvious in retrospect, but the moment where I thought, no, this should be a Vampire Weekend song. And we started working on it, and it had this combination of kind of like a mid-tempo hip hop thing. I wanted the groove to kind of like be reminiscent of a bittersweet symphony that's kind of like something that felt like a bit like a band

but also kind of like a head nod type thing. Yeah, like the Rostam's arrangement with the harpsichords and things like that. It started to really feel like this is where Vampire Weekend should go. And it felt like that was an early one we worked on that really made me feel like, right, this feels so connected to the early work and yet this is where I always wanted to go

to in terms of songwriting. Let's listen to Step. Every time I see you in the world, you always step to my girl Back, back, way back I used to front lock and go out Mechanics, bug and good, Jadara's alarm We're home in New York with champagne and disco Tapes of Métalé slash San Francisco But actually Oakland and Alameda Your girl was in Berkeley with a communist reader Mine was in Tundra then Boombox and Walkman I was a horrible girl that was back then

The gloves are lost, the wisdom teeth are out, what you on about? I feel it in my bones, I feel it in my bones I'm stronger now, I'm ready for the house, such a modest mouth I can't do it alone, I can't do it alone Every time I see you in the world, you always step to my girl Ancestor told me that Degas was better She's richer than Cretaceous, she's tougher than leather I just ignored all the tales of her past life The dagger was better, she's richer than cretes, she's tougher than leather

I just ignored all the tears of a past life Still conversation deserves but a bread knife And punks who would laugh when they're sourced together Well they didn't know how to dress for the weather Arches deceiving their huddled-down ancestor Snow falling slow to the sound of the master Get closer off, the wisdom teeth are out What you want about, I feel it in my bones

I feel it in my bones I'm stronger now, I'm ready for the house Touching my mouth, I can't do it alone I can't do it alone, I can't do it alone Wisdom's a gift but you traded for youth Ages and honor to stand up to truth We saw the stars and they hid from the world You cursed the sun when it stepped to your girl Maybe she's gone and I can't resurrect her The truth is she doesn't need me to protect her

We know the true death, the true wave of flesh Everyone's dying, girl, you're not old yet Gloves are off, the wisdom teeth are out What you on about? I feel it in my bones I feel it in my bones I'm stronger now, I'm ready for the house, such a must now I can't do it alone, I can't do it alone Gloves are off, the whiskers teeth are out What you on about? I feel it in my bones I feel it in my bones I'm stronger now, I'm ready for the high, such a must now

I can't do it alone, I can't do it alone Every time I see you in the world, you always stretch my arm That is so beautiful. I love that song. Oh, thank you. Yeah, that is such a special song, I think, for Vampire Weekend. I had this sense that the three albums were heading to that place. It's funny to talk about it and realize that song was hanging out right next to all the songs in the early days.

It could have conceivably been on a previous album other than the fact that it didn't belong on them. Yeah. Also, I'm glad it didn't because maybe it wouldn't have sounded as good. Obviously, in that sense, there was growth, and that was the first album that Ariel worked on, so I think he brought a bunch to the table in terms of the sound of that album.

Yeah, so it just wasn't the moment, and even sometimes just because a song is good or it has a cool idea, it doesn't necessarily belong on that album. And it's so much more meaningful that that song is on the third album. So I'm so glad it worked out that way. Yeah, just the context is right.

It makes a difference. Totally. Tell me about the song, Step. It had deep roots. What was the beginning of it? It was just listening to that Souls of Mischief song and you know I said... Should we hear a little bit of that? Yeah, sure.

Just as a reference. You know and I said before like I had my experimentation with rapping throughout my life. Even when I was in high school, one older guy at my school, Raj, who was a friend and also a bit of a mentor to me, you know he was a hip hop DJ and he rapped and spent many hours driving around the suburbs and into the city, you know, in his car listening to The Roots and Tribe Called Quest. And so, you know, I think I always wrestled a little bit with the fact that Vampirican came out, we were so obsessed with hip-hop and hip-hop.

And I guess I was a little bit distressed about the fact that we were so obsessed with hip-hop. And I guess I was a little bit distressed about the fact that we were so obsessed with hip-hop. And I guess I was a little bit distressed about the fact that we were so obsessed with hip-hop. And I guess I was a little bit distressed about the fact that we were so obsessed with hip-hop. Is there some way that I can take how inspired I feel by the lyrical approach but actually

sound like me? Yeah. Also, I want to ask about that punky energy. Was that the sound of the day? That's an interesting question. There were different types of punky energy floating around. I remember, and I loved Gang of Four and stuff. I remember spending, who knows, $23 out of my limited funds when I was in high school to get an imported CD because it was out of print at that time.

So I loved all that stuff, but in the early 2000s there had been such a revival of, I guess what you could call it, kind of post-punk references and dance punk stuff, all the stuff that I loved. So I remember specifically when Vampire Weekend started talking about we can't do that kind of like punky disco beat. So yes, there was a lot of flavors of punky energy, but with Vampire Weekend, I think there weren't too many people, at least in the US, maybe in England it was different, referencing another flavor of punky energy

which I love, which was Elvis Costello's Squeeze and Graham Parker, very much my dad's record collection. More like singer-songwriter version of punky energy. Yeah, exactly. I don't want to say nerdier, because that's just overused, but yeah, bands where you're like, right, as much as, you know, whatever, famously the Sex Pistols would diss the Beatles, right?

They had to. That was their schtick. And then you realize, you hear those bands, and you're like, there's nothing that weird about the Beatles with a little more punky energy. Like, you know, that's what squeezes. Okay, step to my girl, here we go. ["Sweet Love"] ["Sweet Love"]

Yes, my melody went somewhere different but... So that's already sampling something old. It's Grover Washington Jr. doing his version of Aubrey, which is a Bread song. So that's why ultimately the guys from Bread are publishing on that song because there's a Bread song, Aubrey, and there's a Grover Washington, I believe, version. Yeah, yeah, right, this is it. It'll go, yeah, so they use that part. So I'd never heard this nor had I heard the bread song, but then eventually I'm like, that's where that little bit of the melody comes from. Aubrey was her name. Let's hear Aubrey, Bread.

It's funny with this stuff, I realized too, it's good that I heard just this little bit of saxophone in the background of the Souls of Mischief song because I couldn't have taken that and run with it if I knew the Bread song intimately. Yeah. It would have been too imprinted in my brain. was her name a not so very ordinary girl or name but who's to blame for a love that wouldn't bloom for the hearts that never played in tune

Like a lovely melody that everyone can sing Take away the words that rhyme, it doesn't mean a thing Yeah, pretty song. I don't know why there's something about like 70s pop culture that is so depressing. Or sometimes you watch like a children's movie from the 70s, more than the 60s, more than the 80s. There's just like this deep sadness in the... It's the me generation. Mm, right.

Well, there's a case to be made that the 70s is the greatest generation of music too, but it is a different... Earlier than later. Right. Well, yeah, the early 70s is like the peak of analog recording. Yeah, and the early 70s is really what we think of when we think of the 60s. Like, when we think of the 60s, we don't think of the 60s.

We think of 67, 68, 69, 70, 71. Right. Yeah, when some of the 60s artists were really hitting like an amazing strut, like Marvin Gaye or, you know, solo genre. Because the early 60s are really like the 50s. Right. Yeah, the simplicity of the pop songs and... How was the third album received?

I mean, I'm sure there must have been some bad reviews, but it was like, for the people who liked us, it was seen as like a breakthrough. I have this memory of being like, we got a couple really great reviews off the bat and really felt like, okay, we did something new, we broke new ground. Now I'd be kind of like, who cares about reviews? But at the time, again, you're looking for validation. And then I remember on that tour,

the Portland show didn't sell out. And it wasn't a particularly big venue. But I just remember this that tour, the Portland show didn't sell out. And it wasn't a particularly big venue. But I just remember this, like, I still joke about it with the guys, like the Portland show didn't sell out. And you know, Portland is, that was the era of Portlandia, you know, it's an indie town.

So I just remember being like, what? Is it, I thought that we had like just broken new ground. It's so important in a career because the trajectory from the start of the band through signing a deal, through the success of the first album to the continued success of the second album, it's nothing but a series of level ups.

And that trajectory doesn't go on forever. So you... It's impossible. It's impossible, right. So even, I kind of remember, yeah, in certain cities being like, well we didn't sell as many tickets this time as the second album, but I don't get it.

Isn't this album even better? And then it was an important moment to realize, right, because you can't worry about this stuff. And there's so many different types of Ws and so many different types of Ls, and you have to let go and there's something about this album where I still meet people who are like, like the people who love modern vampires, they, I don't know, they talk about it in different terms than the people who

love the first two albums, for instance. And of course we have people who love them all, but yeah, and that ultimately is why that album probably is so important to our career, is because it broke new emotional ground. And a few hundred tickets in Portland doesn't really matter. What may fall within the sphere of Tetragrammaton? Counterculture Tetragrammaton. Sacred geometry Tetragrammaton.

The Avant-Garde Tetragrammaton. Generative art Tetragrammaton. The Tarot Tetragrammaton. Out of print music Tetragrammaton. Biodynamics Tetragrammaton. Graphic design Tetragrammaton Out of print music Tetragrammaton Biodynamics Tetragrammaton Graphic design Tetragrammaton

Mythology and magic Tetragrammaton Obscure film Tetragrammaton Beach culture Tetragrammaton Esoteric lectures Tetragrammaton

Off the grid living Tetragrammaton Alt spirituality Tetragrammaton The canon of fine objects Tetragrammaton Muscle cars Tetragrammaton. Alt. Spirituality. Tetragrammaton. The canon of fine objects. Tetragrammaton. Muscle cars. Tetragrammaton. Ancient wisdom for a new age. Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day. Take a breath and see where you are drawn.

So we talked about the mood of the third album. How was the making of the third album different than what came before? How was the making of the third album different than what came before? The third album was difficult to make. I think... Was it the first one you made in California? Kind of, yeah. It's the most time we'd spent in California. We did plenty of it in New York, but there was... meeting Ariel and kind of doing quite a bit of work out here on trips made it the most time we'd spent here working. Yeah, I remember it being difficult. I remember still having a lot of stress, maybe just as much if not more.

I mean, people I work with have like clown me about, you say every album is like high stakes, you know, like you say once we have three albums we can breathe easy, once we have four, once we have five, I do actually feel like now we have five and I can breathe easy in a sense, but whatever, I didn't feel that way after too. And I felt like the third album was high stakes. And so I remember having a lot of stress. Describe the difficulty in making it. Well just creatively, I remember at a time just feeling we didn't have enough songs. And looking back, we probably had already had all the songs that people love, but we

still needed a few more. And maybe that was still me negotiating the fast and loud songs versus the quiet and slow ones and being like, oh, God, if we don't have the balance right, people won't accept this from us. And then, you know then also just reaching the, without going into too much detail, just like naturally band stuff. Like realizing four people,

four sets of ambitions and hopes and dreams, and figuring out what the band was, and me having to realize that even if I was the de facto leader and then realizing, right, but that doesn't mean it's easy. That means people have all sorts of feelings and trying to figure out, well, what does it mean for everybody to be a part of the band? And what we're bringing in, Ariel, I think was a positive thing, but even that represented a new triangulation of energy and stuff like that. So I think of that as a pretty, in one sense, like an unsettled period. Was that the first album you had an outside producer involved in?

Yes. And, you know, so much of that album was, Ross and I are already done, and yet we still needed Ariel to come in. I mean, there's certain, when I look at that album, I look at there's songs that we just needed like another set of eyes just to let us know it was done and kind of put the finishing touches on. And then there's songs where he fundamentally changed them

and he got to be in from the ground floor. Like Obvious Bicycle, for instance, he dramatically changed that song, or Everlasting Arms, those are the two I always associate with R.L., really changing. But even the ones that we had done so much of the work already, we were in the kind of stuck in something,

and we needed not just his ears, but even just like him, just another person, just to kind of move past certain things. But I think that's natural in the band. It's like you start out and people probably are like, oh cool, things are going good, we're all in this together. And then you reach a point where people say, well hold on, I wanted to do more of this.

Or somebody says, I don't know if this is my be all end all. And so you're in this unsettled period and then maybe eventually you go through all those things and you reach another period of relative kind of like calm. But I think of that as being a particularly unsettled moment and everything certainly worked out for the best. But you know, like there, yeah, that was a, we were still in our twenties and kind of like

figuring out the future of the band. So I think some of that anxiety, which maybe a lot of people feel in their late 20s about everything, about your career, your relationships, your approach to life, I think all that anxiety is in the album. Which of the two songs that you said Ariel really had a hand in yeah would be more interesting to listen to and this might be above my pay grade as a My approach to production has always been as a listener, you know, I can talk a little bit about compression and EQ and all this shit, but the the one that I

associate so much with a set of sensibilities coming together is Everlasting Arms because this song began with a kind of synthy beat that Rossman made. And I wrote on top of that and I really liked it. And yet there was something kind of, how would I put it, shiny or fun about the bouncy scents that didn't seem to fit with this album. And I just kind of remember this one day where Ariel, I think, threw down some bass and some congas and created this kind of like organic but still using a bit of like sidechain compression, which gave it this feeling of old and new together,

where I was kind of like, oh, right, okay. That felt like a little bit of Ariel bringing his sensibility to something that had started with Rostam, then I wrote on top of and then got to him. So I think of that one as being like indicative. Let's hear it. Yeah, right off the bat, it's the most hiss there'd ever been on a Vampire Weekend song. I call Ariel a hissy fit sometimes. He's the king of his. But I'm never gonna understand, never understand

Oh, I was born to live without you But I'm never gonna understand, never understand Hold me in your everlasting arms Looked up full of fear, trapped beneath the chandeliers Going down Looked up full of fear, trapped beneath the chandeliers going down I fought it over and drew the curtain Don't leave me to myself, leave me to myself I honed the DC rise, you played the hallelujah Leave me to myself, don't leave me to myself If you'd been made server master You'd be fighting by the open hand, fighting by the hand Could I have been made to serve a master? Well I'm never gonna understand, never understand

Hold me in your everlasting arms Everlasting arms Looked up for the fields trapped Neath the chandeliers going down So that one, when you wrote to Rustam's keyboard, it didn't yet have a beat? It definitely had some of the grooves. It didn't have those drums. It had, I just the sense. K-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k- real there, of course I could write on, I was very excited by it, but there was, it was like putting on a different set of clothes to the same kind of feel.

And you know what I mean? How often would you get a piece of music from Rostam and write to it versus not find a way in? It would depend on when, like, I can remember all the ones that worked, it's hard to remember the ones that didn't work. I remember us being really in the zone together in that period when I felt we didn't have enough songs

and we took a kind of writer's retreat, just the two of us. And at that point, I felt like in terms of the songs that started with me, I kind of felt like I was tapped out. Like Hannah Hunt, Step, those were songs that I'd been working on so long. I just, I didn't feel like I could just start something again. And I remember Rapid Succession, him playing me that,

and then what became Don't Lie, and just immediately having a sense of like, I know what to do with this, and then I know what to do melodically. You know, even before it got to Ariel, I knew I really felt strongly about that song. It just didn't quite fit the aesthetic of the album yet. Understood.

And tell me, how did Ariel get involved and at what point in the process? I would say roughly halfway through, and he... Did you know you were halfway through or did you think you were near the end? I'm sure we thought we were near the end. I always think we're closer to the end than we are. My memory of it is that we had,

you know, I can only speak for myself. I remember fairly early on having this feeling like there's some really good stuff here. We're having some pretty significant breakthroughs in terms of what this band can do. And yet there's a feeling of like stuckness. But I think, Rossum knew Ariel better than me in a weird coincidence, a guy named Mickey Stanley whose brother was in our year at Columbia was kind of interning for Ariel.

So I think that was, it was just like a coincidence. So he and Rossum got to know each other a bit. I'd met him maybe once or twice. And I knew I had got a good vibe off of him because I remember, I think it's a matter of a debate about like who suggested him first, but I just remember at the very least we were both totally on the same page about he'd be a good person to work with. And again, it's funny looking back, which aspects of his work I even knew. I felt a connection to him because as a teenager, he'd been in a Scott Punk band called the Hippos. He'd had randomly kind of was known for having produced this big hit for the Plain White

Teas, Hey There Delilah, which is a huge song, continues to be. But that's not necessarily indicative of his sound. One thing about Arielle is he doesn't have one sound. All I knew was that he kind of had the right vibe. And actually, it kind of just worked out. And I think it just made a lot of sense to have somebody else in there doing something for the third time.

You just need like a shakeup. How would you say the process was different having the third man there? It probably relieved some tension, like emotionally. That can just be true anytime. You have three people in a room versus two. Suddenly you can triangulate differently. New set of ideas. A new set of ideas.

Let's try this. Yeah, or you can take out some frustration, make them the scapegoat. These things are important to kind of be united and making fun of somebody. Or I could leave more often and feel like, okay, there's still some dialogue happening. I mean, just in terms of workflow,

I remember the two of them being in rooms across the hall and working on different songs, so just in that sense, there was like more getting done. You know, just listening back to the songs with you, and I hear like Everlasting Arms, and I remember being like, right, at that point, I thought that was far and away the best vocal I'd ever done. And I think part of that was probably being with some, like sometimes recording vocals with Ariel and he was somebody I didn't

know that well, but that weirdly made me feel more comfortable at times and he had a different approach to like comping. So I think his vocal comps brought a new energy, his love of analog recording, which up to that point had not particularly been a part of Vampire Weekend, you know, and I think like those first two albums are very pro tools. And you know, hence the the hissy fit aspect. So yeah, I think it changed the workflow and it got us out of just like some of those log jams. So I think there's songs workflow and it got us out of just like some of those log jams So I think there's songs that it depends on the song there's songs like without Ariel Yeah, maybe would sound 10% different and their songs were like no it sounded dramatically different

And that's why I think of him as coming in at the middle what happened after the albums finished How was it received for the most part? Positively yeah, like that it was, there was some like, I remember some very like meaningful reviews, which you know, on the one hand, who cares about reviews, but it's better than the other way. Yeah, and also when reviews are important, it's like a funny thing, like reviews,

a musician shouldn't think reviews are important, but having an interesting dialogue around your music, of course that's important, and having people who connect to it or have interesting things to say about it, that is important. How was taking it on the road? Taking it on the road was like pretty good.

You know, like I said, there was still this unsettled feeling, and then there was also that funny thing too, which I look back now as being realizing my nervous system was probably addicted to the upward trend of the last couple years, hence something as ridiculous as being like, wait, why didn't we, the document Portland showed didn't sell out, that must be a bad sign. And now I can look at it and say, good sign, bad sign, who cares? But I remember at that time kind of feeling like, and I think it's also just the truth,

doing something for the third time, sometimes third time's the charm, sometimes third time is feeling, wow, we've really done this, haven't we? So I remember some of those shows, like, it's very easy coming from New York to remember every album New York show very vividly. First album would so many different shows be playing Bowie Rebaldum for the first time. The peak of the second album was doing three nights at Radio City, and that felt like, wow. You know, a big iconic.

It's the nature of Radio City is, it feels monumental. Yeah, it felt very special. And to be there three nights, yeah, like a mini residency, like, wow, all right, back in the dressing room, like, wow, we're putting on a show. That felt very exciting. And I think even probably the energy of like our friends and family being a little bit like, okay, wow, this was like, look at all these people. And when I remember modern vampires, I remember playing at the Barclay Center where the Nets

play in Brooklyn, which I lived really close to there at the time. It should have felt like a homecoming. But I just remember feeling like, oh, maybe we don't belong in arenas. And maybe we're not going to as good as this album is and as meaningful as it feels to me, maybe something, some kind of magic has gone or something. So I remember having mixed feelings in that time, which looking back, it's like the whole album

is about mixed feelings, so who knows. Had you done many arena gigs before Barclays? No, that might have been our only one. I remember it was a cool bill. I remember it was a pretty new venue at the time, and it's nice. It's not a dump. There was something exciting about it, but maybe just the vibe was off.

Maybe the- It's also not fair to compare a new building to Radio City. Like Radio City is such an iconic once in a lifetime experience. Absolutely. And even though Barclays was a new arena, it's an arena like an arena. Yeah, totally. And I think sometimes you remember these moments and these feeling like walking off stage

and being like, ah, I don't know. Have we run out of juice or something? Is the magic gone? Am I over this? And I guess it's the same way. I feel there's some quote somebody said once that I like where it's like, with all due respect to the mysteries of the universe and the soul, sometimes you feel a certain way

just because you're hungry. And it's true. Sometimes you really are, you think about some moment where you're like, yeah, I felt like the light had gone out of my life, or I felt like, what's the point of all this? Who knows, maybe you were hungry. Or you ate the wrong thing.

And I think that's kind of true too, with all due respect to the artistic temperament and the big feelings that we have about why am I doing this and do I feel connected to my work. Maybe sometimes you just played the wrong venue on the wrong night, but the feeling's real. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And is it at the end of that album cycle that Rastam decides to leave the group?

Yeah, more or less. Was it brewing for a long time? Well, I don't want to speak for him, but I would say so because even in the early days of the band, I remember very early days him saying something to everybody else in the band. I don't remember the conversation. I don't remember the tone.

But I remember it was something along the lines of like, you know, I see this as one of many projects that I'm involved in. Which is not a weird thing for a producer to say. And I don't know, like I said, I've always had a feeling of, Vampire Weekend can be just about anything. All I want to do is pick the songs, you know?

So I remember, I wasn't freaked out by that. It just didn't seem like one of those bands where the lineup needed to be the exact same forever. So I wasn't, when I think back to this period and I remember it feeling unsettled or wondering if something had come to an end, whatever internal things were going on with the band, that's also just my own personal relationship

to music trade. So in some ways that also felt like great timing. Like the first three albums are such a complete thought that I knew as soon as the third album was received before Ross Time Left, I already had this sense. I was like, well, we've gone from a punk to step. That's something. We've gone from a kind of collegiate indie partyish music

to an album that the critical fan industrial complex seems to think is serious work. Okay, that's really something. And in some ways you could even say, well, that's enough to do that transition. So as soon as that album came out, I already had this feeling of like, a thought had been completed, a moment had ended,

and looking back and sometimes hearing or reading music writers talk about that, even just that year felt like the end of one thing and the beginning of something else. So to already have those feelings, to already having made an album that in large part is about wrestling with meaning, I mean now I look at it as being somewhat naive, but you know the way that you wrestle with meaning. I mean, now I look at it as being somewhat naive,

but you know, the way that you wrestle with meaning when you're in your late 20s and think like, okay, what is the rest of my life gonna look like? What do I believe in? What is my relationship to my work, to the universe, whatever. So in that sense, it felt like kind of a good time for a change and for a break.

Having a line up change and a reason to pause, I don't know, I look back at that as so necessary and ultimately positive. ["The Day We Were Together"] Music you