A new Vampire Weekend release could be just around the corner, with the band’s bassist Chris Baio indicating the band has completed work on its fifth LP in an Instagram post on Dec. 14.
Of course, the band seemed to have let the cat out of the bag in the most Vampire Weekend-like manner possible: not with a press release, or a straightforward post, but with a mention in a newsletter that accompanied the vinyl-only release of a live performance for members of the band’s record club. As spotted by an eagle-eyed Stereogum reporter, a Xeroxed-company-newsletter-style missive included with the announcement of a release from the band’s 2019 show in Milan featured the following note from Baio: “I’d like to conclude this update with the most exciting news: LP 5 IS DONE.”
Ezra Koenig onstage in 2019.
Vampire Weekend’s last album, of course, was the No. 1 charting-Father of the Bride, released in 2019. The band’s first without founding member Rostam Batmanglij, the album saw the group explore a far-flung variety of musical styles, with assists from the likes of Steve Lacy, Danielle Haim and Jenny Lewis. The album was the group’s third consecutive chart-topper, and was later nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammys, picking up the band’s second Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album.
In a previous newsletter over the summer, the band’s drummer Chris Tomson shared: “[Frontman] Ezra [Koenig] took a raga singing lesson with Terry Riley in rural Japan and wrote what he considers to be 7 of his all-time top 10 best songs.” He later promised that the material “might be our best yet…10/10, no skips.”
Vampire Weekend's last album, 'Father of the Bride,' included multiple collaborations with Steve Lacy.
Whether that means the group is actually taking a turn for raga-inspired indie jams is anyone’s guess, though it certainly wouldn’t be out of keeping with the band’s ever-shifting stylistic experiments. As Koenig explained to The Guardian back in 2019, when asked about indie rock’s relevancy “crisis” of the mid-2010s: “For a lot of people participating in music then, that was a stressful time, an existential crisis. But a few years later, the vibe was not so much this big existential question, because to me there’d been an answer. Is rock dead? Yes. Are guitar bands relevant? Not particularly. And I enjoyed the straightforwardness of that... How come the person who did the same thing year-to-year is not getting the same praise as the person who changed things? Because that’s how it works. How come the person who is bringing back something from 20 years ago is getting praise? Because that’s how it works.”
In addition to the album completion announcement, Baio’s newsletter (titled “Bravo Vampiri”) shared memories of the group's first experiences performing in Italy, included his own recipe for lamb pappardelle, and featured the following description of a recent “Vampire Weekend Corporate Retreat” on the coast of southern Oregon:
“It was a dream to show my guys around a region of the country I have fallen in love with over the past few years. We took a buggy tour of the famous south Oregon sand dunes (shoutout to Sandland Adventures!), ate great food, explored rugged beaches, and most importantly, discussed all our plans for 2024. And let me tell ya, folks, there are a lot of them.”
