Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend took to Instagram this morning to announce the band’s first album in six years, and their first album without founding member Rostam Batmanglij, who left in 2016.
The album’s initials are FOTB (we don’t know the full title yet), and it will consist of 18 songs. Koenig explained in the post that two songs will be released every month for the next three months until the album comes out, with the first two songs coming next week.
Koenig also wrote about the creative process:
“It’s called “FOTB” (well those are the initials – that’s a VW tradition) and it’s 18 songs. Picked the name a few years ago. At some point early on, the album drifted from the Mitsubishi Macchiato aesthetic. It was a helpful guiding principle tho. Working titles are important too.
It’s a lot of songs but they all belong there. (If you disagree, you can always say it was 6 songs too long & make a lil 12-song playlist version of it.) At first, I wanted to make two 23-song albums on some human chromosome shit but then 23&me started doing Spotify playlists and I don’t know…felt we’d been scooped.”
He’s not joking about 23AndMe doing Spotify playlists, by the way, although it was Ancestry.com who partnered up with them to use DNA to curate playlists. The playlists are based on the geography of your ancestors, in which case mine would be full of terrible Greek music, and I’m already not interested in looking into this any further.
Anyway, back to the album. It’s their first since Modern Vampires Of The City, which was released in May 2013, which feels like a lifetime ago.
Per Pitchfork’s report, the announcement follows the band making their first festival appearances in years last year, as well as revamping their website, returning to Instagram, and playing informal shows.
I’m keen.
new vampire weekend songs coming out next week and i am elated pic.twitter.com/Hdf7mS511c
— james (@champagneprius) January 17, 2019
new vampire weekend next week time to suit up pic.twitter.com/GorbzIGfNP
— jacob (@jacob_is_online) January 17, 2019
