By Liz Hammond, Staff Writer
Do you know how hard it is to patiently wait for your favorite band of all time to release new music? Well, imagine that and then double it, because Vampire Weekend decided to wait six years to bless my life with music.
In 2013, their album, “Modern Vampires of the City,” came out and they stunned me with their production levels and lyrics. I was ready for more right away, but I wasn’t expecting to wait this long.
Between 2013 and now, the band suffered a loss in 2016 when founding member Rostam Batmanglij left the band. As a fan, you start to wonder if maybe they aren’t going to make music anymore.
It wasn’t until Jan. 17 that frontman Ezra Koenig revealed that they plan to release two songs at a time until the album is released.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: What is the album even called? For a while, the title was speculated to be “Mitsubishi Macchiato,” but Koenig originally announced the initials of the album as “FOTB,” which was later revealed as “Father of the Bride.”
They blessed us with “Harmony Hall” and “2021” as the album’s first singles on Jan. 24. Let me just say – when you wait six years for songs to be released, you have high expectations.
On the first listen, “Harmony Hall” is a happy song with beautiful piano and acoustic guitar picks. Listening to the chorus takes you back to 2013’s “Finger Back:” the earlier song’s last line – “I don’t wanna live like this, but I don’t wanna die” – is used in the chorus of “Harmony Hall.”
As happy as the sound of the song is, the lyrics really push you to think more in-depth. Prior to the chorus is my favorite set of lines: “Thought that I was free from all that questioning/But every time a problem ends/Another one begins.”
You can’t help but listen to how mellow both of these songs are compared to the rest of their discography – especially “2021.”
The song opens with Koenig singing, with minimal synth and sound accompanying him. It is more stripped-down compared to “Harmony Hall.” But to me, there’s something about this song that shows great promise. It’s almost as if Koenig is singing to his fans about how he hopes that we all stay around: with “2021, will you think about us?/Copper goes green, steel beams go rust,” he’s talking about the passage of time and how some things in the world just naturally decay.
As we await the release of the next two songs, we should really just appreciate how far this band has come – not only in their own personal journeys, but also in their discography. This is what will solidify their spot as one of the greatest bands of the 2000s.