âHeâs in that in-between moment for an artist, when the work is done but he still doesnât know what story to tell about it. The album has a name, but he doesnât want to disclose that name just yet. He plays me a couple of tracks, nervously pacing, stepping outside the room, or picking the guitar back up to play along, like heâs still figuring out how the songs go. Theyâre big and bright and immediateâyou can hear the rooms they were recorded in, picture exactly who theyâre about. He asks me not to be more specific than that, so there you are: big and bright and immediate. The young, charming characters of old Vampire Weekend songsâwitty, ironically detached, with expansive vocabularies and broken heartsâare here, but older and wiser and sadder. Like Koenig, theyâve lived a bit more life. âThe people in âOxford Commaâ and âWhite Skyâ and 'Step'âI had this feeling this is where those people are now,â he says. âLike, this is where all this shit ended up.ââ
âThe bandâs new record will come out on Columbia later this yearâpretty much every label, indie and major alike, made them an offer, Koenig says. And he, along with the rest of the bandâremaining original members Chris Tomson and Chris Baioâwill have to learn what it means to be in Vampire Weekend in 2019. Koenig recently had the liberating realization that it might actually be okay if the band arenât quite as popular as they used to be: "On the last record, I had this slight feeling that we got a little bit too big.â Now, âsometimes people ask me, Are you nervous that youâve been gone so long? And I might have been nervous three years ago, like, Am I gonna get all this shit together? Now Iâm at this place where Iâm kinda like, if the record wasnât done and I wasnât excited to go on tour, I might even wait longer. Not only did I stop stressing about the fact that it had taken so long, I started to be like, This makes sense. Why do people release music more than every five years?â He smiles and reaches over to the computer in the studio with the new record on it. He gave the final version to the label just the other day, he says.âYou want to listen to a couple more?"â
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