Could we be hearing a few new songs from Vampire Weekend during their set at the Big Day Out?
The odds are very likely – with news that the band will release a new album in the American spring (the Australian autumn), the follow-up to 2010’s Contra.
Frontman Ezra Koenig dropped the details in an interview with Q magazine, which Rolling Stone found on a fan’s Tumblr page.
Koening told Q that the album – which will be the band’s third studio effort – naturally feels like it’s “the third chapter in the book”, and will also be “darker” and more “organic”.
“We created some characters on the first record, some of which are real people, some of which are ourselves, so it’s not hard to keep following them and see what their concerns are now and how their lives have changed.”
Koening also said that the band deliberately took their time making the follow-up to Contra so they could put out a record that wasn’t half-baked and one which they would be happy to play live night in, night out.
“If someone had put a gun to our heads a year ago, we could have handed something in and it wouldn’t have sucked,” said Koenig.
“But if we listen back to our own work and it doesn’t sound the way we wanted, the depression that sets in is really extreme. So releasing a record that we didn’t feel 100 percent about would commit us to a year of depression, touring a half-assed record.”
Vampire Weekend will tour Australia as part of the Big Day Out later this month. They’ll also do one sideshow in Sydney at The Metro on January 23. Get all the details here.
