HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend

Cast your minds back to 2008. It was a time when quirky alt rock was king, where PIGEON DETECTIVES danced to JOY DIVISION and THE TING TINGS told us everything but what their name actually was. The song of the summer was TEMPER TRAP’s infectiously saccharine Sweet Disposition and festivals the length and breadth of the country were awash with backcombed hair and spray on skinny jeans, while the likes of KINGS OF LEON and KATE NASH took top billing in front of an audience of thousands. 

And amidst the droves of bands leading guitar music’s charge back to the top, a bunch of fresh-faced New Yorkers were busy building a buzz with their own brand of indie rock, infused with chamber pop and world music influences. The four members of VAMPIRE WEEKEND – frontman Ezra Koenig, multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij, bassist Chris Baio and drummer Chris Tomson – met whilst enrolled at Columbia University and through prior iterations that involved a hip-hop collaboration and a short film that Koenig worked on for all of two days, they folded burning passions for Afropop and their myriad cultural heritages into their colourful, jangly indie rock. 

Their early demos of Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa and debut single Mansard Roof led to an incredible amount of internet buzz through 2007, and attracted the attention of every aspirational music blog of the time. VAMPIRE WEEKEND were shot for the cover of Spin Magazine, becoming the first band to ever be on the cover before their debut album was out, and they built such a strong fanbase that they were able to embark on a handful of tours without even having an album on the merch table.

Their eponymous debut album was released to critical acclaim on 29th January 2008, and received five-star reviews from esteemed publications around the world. Vampire Weekend is an album that bristles with myriad influence and melds disparate elements into a cohesive, comprehensive and contagious record. Riding the indie/alt popularity wave, the band fused Afrobeat and chamber pop characteristics with their bright guitar lines and peculiar lyrics. On the production front, they employed harpsichords, strings and hand drums, and recorded in a barn, two apartments and a basement. For a little while, it seemed as if Vampire Weekend would remain a sleeper hit; a lesser-known gem only to be adored by their already-considerable fanbase and appreciated by the most thorough music anoraks. But with the single release of A-Punk, exposure happened in a big way.

Across the yawning chasm of music history, there are a handful of stand out examples of ‘Hey’ being shouted in songs whether it comes from THE RAMONES, OUTKAST or DJ OTZI – artists who used the word in such a distinctive way that there’s a good chance at least one of the three songs alluded to here is now in your head. A-Punk instantly slotted itself into that list; coming amidst the hey-day (no pun intended) of quirky alt rock, this jangling nugget of chamber pop-infused energy was a perfect warming tonic to the cold February air, not least in its air-punching and jubilant “Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!” post-chorus refrain. The resulting public clamor opened palatial doors for VAMPIRE WEEKEND, who performed on David Letterman and Saturday Night Live, and a handful of their songs appeared in leading TV shows and films including Grey’s Anatomy (Mansard Roof), How I Met Your Mother and I Love You, Man (Oxford Comma), and their new, famous track was used in the titles of comedy classic Step Brothers, as well as going on to be used in The Inbetweeners, Superstore, and – somehow – Love Island.

With the exposure came more and more attention to their hidden gem of an album. Come the end of the year, Vampire Weekend had maintained its critical acclaim, being listed as the fifth best album of 2008 by Time, as well as being named the 51st best album of the 2000s by Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone placing it as the 56th best album of that same time frame in 2010. They even went so far as to proclaim it the 430th best album of all time in 2012, beating the likes of NIRVANA‘s In Utero and THE WHITE STRIPES‘ White Blood Cells. Indeed, such standings place it as one of the greatest debut albums of all time and for good reason. 

Amidst the colourful splendor of Vampire Weekend, the band had laced their tracks with whimsy, heart and uniqueness. Songs like One (Blake’s Got A New Face) were instant and infectious, while the likes of I Stand Corrected displayed a more serious side to Koenig‘s lyricism and the band’s ability to get serious when they needed to. Even now, Vampire Weekend borders on timeless, sounding like it could have feasibly been made any time in the last 35-40 years, and survives today as a resplendent time capsule of simpler times and hazy summer days.

It also meant that the world became their oyster, and VAMPIRE WEEKEND ran with it, going on to release three more fantastic albums: 2010’s Contra, 2013’s Modern Vampires Of The City and 2019’s Father Of The Bride. Along the way, they’ve employed Hollywood A-listers for their music videos and snagged a mound of awards, including a pair of Grammys for Best Alternative Music Album on their two latest records, all without sacrificing their distinctive sound and global appeal.

Unfortunately, multi-instrumentalist Batmanglij left the band in 2016 and the VAMPIRE WEEKEND camp has gone woefully quiet since 2021’s artistic EP 40:42, but with their pedigree and firm foundation in the world of indie rock, we hope to see them make a heroic return before too long. For now though, we always have Vampire Weekend and the nostalgia of those care-free 2008 summer days. And maybe that’s all we need in 2023.

Vampire Weekend was originally released January 29th, 2008 via XL Recordings.

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