#430 Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend (2007)
MUSIC HISTORY WRITTEN BY HEAD WRITER DJ MORTY COYLE:
Released on January 28th, 2008 on the British XL Recordings label and produced by Rostam Batmanglij, this is the eponymous debut album by American Indie-Rock, Baroque Pop, World Beat, New York-based band Vampire Weekend.
To call Vampire Weekend, which is comprised of producer and multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij, Ezra Koenig on lead vocals, guitar, piano, and hand-drum, Chris Baio on bass, and Christopher Tomson on drums and guitar, a college rock band is an understatement.
The band formed while all four members were students at New York’s prestigious Ivy League Columbia University.
Although both Koenig and Batmanglij had previously played in New York Indie Rock band, “The Dirty Projectors” Vampire Weekend originally grew out of the clever and often humorous rap project Koenig had with drummer, Christopher Tomson in 2006 under the name “L’Homme Run” (Lowm-eh Run).
Besides being into the usual college rock bands like The Smiths, The Pixies, and The Cure and popular bands at the time like Coldplay another thing all the individual members of the band had in common was their inspiration from African and World Music.
In fact they described their sound as, “Upper West Side Soweto (So-Way-Toe)“ after their New York City origins and the South African town they emulated.
And rather than dress down or be too hip to try and fit in with other bands of their era they embraced being college Preppies in their polo shirts and top-siders.
After a relatively short time of playing campus battles of the bands, local gigs, and a quick tour they put together this debut with a true DIY ethos.
It was self-financed and recorded in their dorm rooms, apartments, family barns, campus studios, and at the dingy Treefort studios in Brooklyn all while the four musicians in their early twenties held down full-time jobs.
When they were done rather than send out their debut album to record companies they approached “tastemaking“ bloggers with bright blue, burned CD-Rs to start an Internet buzz.
It worked and helped get them a record deal with the very hip and exclusive British independent label XL Recordings who put out records including The Prodigy, The White Stripes, M.I.A., and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke.
But their hype was met with almost as much backlash by critics who assumed their privileged, Ivy League, lifestyles coupled with their pilfered (stolen) elements of World Beat sounds was disingenuous.
Nonetheless five singles were released from the album which went platinum and charted in the top 20 on the pop charts and even higher on the independent and alternative charts.
The band has since gone on to put out two more records on XL Recordings and then last year after a six year break they put out their first major label release on Columbia Records.
All three records debuted at number one upon release.