Finally. Finally. FINALLY.
After what felt like endless months of teasing, red herrings and false hope, Vampire Weekend have confirmed that their new album will be released this year and they’ll be dropping brand new music next week.
Taking to Instagram, frontman Ezra Koenig wrote a long post explaining why the album took so long to make, why he didn’t feel like it felt that long and gave some insight into how they plan to release the music.
“I know that 5-6 years is considered a long time between records,” he wrote. “Personally, I think it’s a dignified pace befitting a band that’s already placed three albums in stores but everyone has their own sense of time. (I swear the time between 3 & 4 felt shorter to me than 2 & 3. I may be in the minority on this one.)” You are, Koenig.
“It’s called “FOTB” (well those are the initials – that’s a VW tradition) and it’s 18 songs,” he wrote elsewhere in the post. “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.”
“Is it a double album? The vinyl will be double so…yes? It’s about 59 minutes long. We can talk more abt that later – if u care. To me, it’s just FOTB.”
Here’s the best part – according to Koenig, new music is gonna be ours from next week and was even generous enough to give us the release schedule.
“There will be three 2-song drops every month until the record is out,” he wrote. “1. hh/2021 2. s/bb 3. tl/uw. (plans can change that’s the plan).”
We can only assume that the initials represent the names of the two songs that’ll be dropping each month. On top of that, judging by the three numbers he gave us, we could expect this album in April or May. However, according to Spin, a representative of the band says that there’s no release date.
Naturally, Koenig has kept an air of mystery around the album or the songs’ full titles, but that’s okay. Catch us bumping Contra on repeat until we finally get this new music.
Read Koenig’s full post below.
