Finally: Vampire Weekend are back with new music. Listen to “Harmony Hall” and “2021” below. The band previously teased a pair of new songs with a two-hour-long video that looped a guitar riff from “Harmony Hall.” The tracks mark Vampire Weekend’s first singles in six years. Their last album, Modern Vampires of the City, came out in 2013. “Harmony Hall” interpolates a lyric from that record’s “Finger Back”: “I don’t wanna live like this/But I don’t wanna die.”
Vampire Weekend have also revealed the title of their new album. FOTB stands for... Father of the Bride. It’s out in spring. Ezra Koenig revealed some other details about the record in a Beats 1 interview with Matt Wilkinson. Koenig said that ex-VW member Rostam Batmanglij contributed production to “Harmony Hall,” and that there’s another track that they “worked very closely on.” He also said that guitarist Greg Leisz plays the solo on “Harmony Hall” and is “all over the record,” while Dave Longstreth contributed another guitar part to “Harmony Hall.” Danielle Haim is also credited on the track. Jenny Lewis sings the “boy” motif in “2021,” Koenig revealed to NPR.
Speaking about “2021,” Koenig said that the track samples Japanese music icon Haruomi Hosono. “This is music that he composed in the ’80s to be played in Muji stores in Japan,” Koenig explained. “And when I first heard it, I was so struck by it and I immediately started looping it and I started writing this song on top of it. So anyway, shout out to Haruomi Hosono, who has graciously cleared the sample for us, and I guess shout out to Muji, too. They don’t own it anymore, he does, but, you know.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Koenig confirmed that the Internet’s Steve Lacy is on FOTB.
Vampire Weekend plan to release at least four more songs from FOTB before it comes out. The double album will be 18 tracks long.
Read “Everything Vampire Weekend Have Done Since Modern Vampires of the City” over on the Pitch.
