Photo by Chiaki Nozu/Redferns
Vampire Weekend returns this week with Father of the Bride, the band’s first studio album in six years. Guitarist and lead singer Ezra Koenig recently sat down for an interview with The Irish Times, in which he discussed how the changes in the group’s lives influenced the album and described how his lyrics have evolved.
According to Koenig, fans and critics who have described Vampire Weekend’s music as telling stories about New York or college life have given the band too much credit. “I think that we don’t tell stories, we do collages, and a collage is not a story,” he said. “It’s very meaningful to me, and it always hurt my feelings when people would say that Vampire Weekend’s lyrics were nonsense. They’re not nonsense. They’re impressionistic.”
Koenig pointed to “Oxford Comma” from the band’s eponymous 2008 debut album as an early example. “That started with the lyrics ‘Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?’ It’s a silly thing, it’s a bit of grammar, but it feels evocative,” he explained. “‘Why would you lie about something dumb like that’ and then you talk about the Dalai Lama and English dramas.”
On the first verse of “Oxford Comma,” Koenig sings:
Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?
I’ve seen those English dramas too; they’re cruel
So if there’s any other way to spell the word
It’s fine with me, with me
Koenig cited “Step” from the group’s 2013 album, Modern Vampires of the City, as more recent example of the collage idea.
“The chorus is just a series of little phrases: ‘the gloves are off, the wisdom teeth are out,‘” Koenig said. “That’s a collage, two little clichéd phrases stuck together that creates a feeling, maybe about aging, maybe about a relationship to music. But it’s a feeling that is bigger than its units.”
On the “Step” chorus, Koenig sings:
The 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 modest mouse
I can’t do it alone, I can’t do it alone
Although Koenig admitted he’ll always be the type of person who starts lyrics with phrases, he said the songs on Father of the Bride have more of a “straightforwardness.”
“When the ideas started coming, they came quickly, and I knew there was a lot there,” he said. “Plus in terms of what chapter four needed to accomplish, only a double album would give me the room to include the contrast I wanted to put forward. I wanted room to have heaviness next to lightness, and smartness next to stupidity. Each of the songs serves a purpose”
Vampire Weekend describes Father of the Bride as an 18-song double album. Featured artists include Steve Lacy of The Internet, Jenny Lewis, and Danielle Haim. The group has released six tracks from the project: “Harmony Hall,” “2021,” “Sunflower,” “Big Blue,” “This Life,” and “Unbearable White.”
Read the full interview at The Irish Times, and catch up on all the lyrics to Vampire Weekend’s biggest hits on Genius now.
