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Vampire Weekend has transformed. With their 2008 self-titled debut, Rostam Batmanglij, Ezra Koenig, Chris Tomson & Chris Baio captured the ideals of young pop fans everywhere with their witty, intellectual constructions of strong pop songs executed with a standard rock set up. Their wistful dreaming from the dorms of an ivy league university sparked interest worldwide, and has subsequently conquered the hearts of bloggers and music-lovers alike. Clearing the difficult sophomore album hurdle with Contra (released last week), they have expanded their sound with their horizons.
Their world has grown – they’ve traveled abroad and lived out their dreams in transatlantic experience – and so their sound has matured. They’ve replaced Tomson’s drum set with programmed beats in some instances (’Taxi Cab’), sampled outlandish vocal chants from M.I.A’s ‘Hussel’ and, to the bewilderment of some, utilised autotune. Like the uncomfortable but eventually rewarding discovery of Islands’ use of the same technique, ‘California English’ creates an eerie effect with the used-to-death technique. Even after asking drummer Chris Tomson I still don’t understand why they did it, but it ups the intrigue greatly. Singer Koenig’s already unusual high-pitched, meandering croon is warped and slapped about the face to bend and melt in the breaking sun of the strings and watery guitar. It’s a head-scratcher but it’s not entirely out of place.
Tomson defends the decision: “One of Rostram (synth/guitar/etc)’s big things for production is to have each song exist or kind of have its own space… if the songs are great, the songs are great, but you wanna keep your ears interested. That definitely applies to the vocals as well, and that melody Ezra wrote is very fast and choppy and jumps around a lot, so they put autotune on just to see how it would fit because of the speed, and then it sounded kind of cool and gave the vocal sound a distinct personality.
“I think it’s very clear that what autotune is at play in ‘California English’ has very little to do with the autotune as popular taste hears it. Ultimately it’s just a digital effect on your voice, much like pretty much every song that’s recorded has digital reverb on a voice.”
“Also I think it sounds nothing like T-Pain, not that T-Pain or Akon are bad; I think we like some of their songs, but you know. I think we use it in a way that I think makes it our own… I think it’s very obvious listening to that song that it’s not a T-Pain worldwide smash.”
Electronics have definitely been favoured in Contra, gone are the ubiquitous African influences that have somewhat plagued them in the press since their debut.
“We’re conscious of not wanting to repeat ourselves… it is, was and always will be an influence and something that’s important to us, but ultimately I think that that really got blown way out of proportion as that was just the easiest thing to write about or to notice. A lot of the songs on the first record really don’t have any, but because some of the other songs maybe do have some, that that was kind of mapped and read across the rest of the songs. But yeah, I think that music from all around the world, be it New York City or Mumbai or South Africa or whatever, pop music from all around the world will be important to us throughout everything we do.”
Their studious nature has always served them well, and in conversation they come across as exceedingly literate and informed – just as has been suggested. As with their education, a lot has also been made of their wealthy backgrounds.
Tomson counters, “I think that in a lot of the history of so-called rock and roll there’s been more of a trend to pretend that you’re poorer than you are, and I think that in some ways maybe people thought that we were richer than we were. Some people got up in arms, some people kind of got it, actually I think that we were just kind of presenting ourselves, or maybe a slightly idealised version of ourselves. And then I think people reacted the way they needed to.”
With the media focus on their social and financial standings firmly held, Tomson admits their media saturated “preppy” image wasn’t their active creation so much as their attempt at, in his words, retaining some control over their portrayal.
“We were very conscious of our band being more than just a musical medium. You know, when people come to see your show people are obviously going to look at you, or when they watch your videos, there’s also very much a visual element to it, and I think we were aware of that. The fact that we dress a certain way and went to a certain school was more than enough for anyone writing about us to write down the appropriate signifiers,” he laughs.
Needless to say they’ve carved out a niche for themselves regardless, and with Contra they put it proudly in the world’s spotlight. It may not be as immediately joyous and salivatingly youthful as their debut, but Vampire Weekend is a band growing up.
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