Vampire Weekend Successfully Reinvented Who They Are

With Father of the Bride, their fourth album, the group has expanded itself and the conception of what a band can be.
Band members of Vampire Weekend march through Washington Square Park singing with fans
Taylor Hill/Getty Images

It was the fifth of May, a drippy powder blue spring morning, when Vampire Weekend took the stage at Webster Hall in New York’s East Village for an all-day Father of the Bride album-release extravaganza. In other circumstances, these details might not be important. But Vampire Weekend is a band that is, and has always been, acutely aware of things like time and place, the season, the weather, eras and epochs. They opened, for instance, with a faithfully easygoing cover of Lou Reed’s “Sunday Morning,” which was apropos not just because of the day of the week but the time of day (morning) and the location of the show (Reed’s old stomping grounds).

For Vampire Weekend, Sunday’s show was itself a grand homecoming—three sets, six-plus hours, with two intermissions, and a few recognizable New Yorkers in the crowd—but it was also one piece of a broader return to the band’s New York roots (they formed at Columbia University). The topsy-turvy Jonah Hill-directed music video for the single “Sunflower” was filmed at Zabar’s in the Upper West Side, and it included a Jerry Seinfeld cameo. On Friday, when Father of the Bride was released, the band played a surprise pop-up show in Washington Square Park. And in between the music on Sunday, fans were treated to a bagel breakfast (good) and pizza lunch (eh).

Six years ago, when Vampire Weekend last released an album (the Grammy-winning Modern Vampires of the City), these New York allusions might have felt a bit on the nose, too obvious for a band so culturally fluent (song titles on their debut referenced Manhattan’s M79 bus, the St. Lucian poet Derek Walcott, and the fashion designer Bryn Lander). But in those ensuing years, the band has lost a member (Rostam Batmanglij) and seen other members relocate to Los Angeles. Ezra Koenig has said that Father of the Bride was “marked by the most painful nostalgia I ever had in my life.” New York is, of course, much more than its symbols, but distance has a way of reducing it; when you leave, a morning bagel or an afternoon slice take on more than their carbs and calories.

Similarly, in a band’s absence, its old songs take on a new power. As eager as fans were to hear Vampire Weekend’s new material on Sunday, it was the old hits (their whole back catalog, really) that brought on the most ecstatic cheers. Vampire Weekend followed “Sunday Morning” with Modern Vampires standout “Obvious Bicycle,” and it only took a few notes for the crowd’s temperature to rise. The lyrics and melody to “Obvious Bicycle” hadn’t changed, but Sunday’s rendition signaled how they’ve evolved. With the band’s new touring members—Brian Robert Jones on guitar, Greta Morgan on keys and guitar—and an additional drummer, the slow-burning song quickly twisted into a crunchy, clap-along jam. (Without a break from the music, Vampire Weekend seamlessly twisted it into a cover of Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man”). Even as Vampire Weekend returned to their roots, they were moving past themselves.

After such a long time away—six years in a band’s prime is an eternity—it’s natural that Vampire Weekend’s return would feel festive, as this weekend most definitely did. But the tension of past uncertainty heightened that feeling. In 2016, when Batmanglij left the band to pursue a career as a solo artist and producer, Vampire Weekend’s fate seemed precarious. And as one of the most ~important~ bands of the 21st century, Vampire Weekend’s unclear fate felt portentous for all bands. At the time, SPIN published an obituary for Vampire Weekend; the writer worried that the band was “the last of a dying breed.” In one interview, Batmanglij himself wondered, “What happened to all the bands? Is New York responsible for it, or is it just that bands are corny now?”

Batmanglij is credited as a producer on two Father of the Bride tracks, but if the band’s first three albums are a “trilogy,” Father of the Bride is the start of something distinctly new. Though signatures of the band remain (witty humor, enthusiasm for esoterica, and grappling with life’s big subjects), their conception of what a band is has transformed. Unlike previous Vampire Weekend albums, voices outside the band play prominent roles on Father of the Bride. The Internet’s Steve Lacy sings, scats, and offers an aside (“I think I take myself too serious / It's not that serious” he says on “Sympathy”). And Danielle Haim plays Sonny to Koenig’s Cher on a few songs. Vampire Weekend isn’t the first band to utilize features, but looked at from a certain angle, these serve as more than just simple guest spots.

In the past few years, Koenig has worked within giant teams of songwriters, contributing to Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo and Beyonce’s Lemonade. Those experiences, he’s said, made him want to adapt a pop star approach to collaboration on this Vampire Weekend album. Though the songwriting process didn’t quite go full Wyoming, some of that collaborative spirit seems to have trickled into what the band’s become. Steve Lacy was absent Sunday (on tour with The Internet), but Danielle Haim joined the revamped and expanded band for each of the songs she’s featured on. And Vampire Weekend also brought out all three Haim sisters (for “This Life”) and Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes (for the closer, “Ya Hey”). Throughout the show, Koenig also periodically shouted out Ariel Rechtshaid, who co-produced the album, and was in attendance. What began as a four person unit has become more of a collective, with Koenig as the nucleus and various friends of the show dipping in and out (David Longstreth and Jenny Lewis also lent vocals). On Sunday, I half-expected everyone to wind up linking hands and sing “Kumbaya.”

Father of the Bride sounds like a product of that new communal spirit. Beyond the inclusion of new voices, the album—both aesthetically and sonically—is looser and more open than their others. Its 18 tracks liberally swing through eras and genres: ‘60s folk, ‘70s country western duets, Grateful Dead-style jam band rock. The album’s cover art is dominated by a big, cartoon Earth, which resembles an ‘80s peace poster. Time remains a lyrical concern, but compared to Modern Vampires, which was backgrounded by ticking clocks, Father of the Bride, with its casual pace and 58 minute run time, finds the band luxuriating in time. For an album in large part about suffering, it’s extremely sufferable. If Vampire Weekend’s absence during these past six years cast doubt on the future of bands, its rebirth this spring suggests, as Steve Lacy offers in “Sympathy”’s intro, “It's not that serious.”