Vampire Weekend Tease “Punky,” “Jammy” Side Project

Wren Graves
·2 min read
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The post Vampire Weekend Tease “Punky,” “Jammy” Side Project appeared first on Consequence.

Vampire Weekend have played around with  a slightly “punky,” slightly “jammy”side project in their free time, band members Ezra Koenig, Chris Tomson, and Chris Baio told the New York Times.

According to Tomson, the extra-curriculars began as a way to blow off steam during the pandemic. “The world had stopped working and a lot of what we normally do was just not being done,” Tomson recalled. “There was something about just playing with no expectation — to just play with my two very close friends without an agenda.”

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Baio added, “It’s very rare for people in a band of our size to be alone together. No engineer, no tour manager, nothing like that. It felt like being at the outset of the band again. And we did that for three years and change, whenever we were all in town.”

And Koenig has even embellished the project with a literary touch. “We kind of have an imaginary back story for that band,” he said. “It was a band that came out around 1989, 1990, and they were a little bit too punky for the jam scene and a little bit too jammy for the punk scene. And there’s a little bit of the Minutemen in there. The truth is, this is very premature because that band is still hashing out its sound. I don’t want to say too much.”

And as for the possibility of this new band opening for Vampire Weekend, “That has been discussed,” Koenig said.

Earlier in that same feature, Koenig claimed that each Vampire Weekend album had a patron saint. From the Times:

“He named Paul Simon for the band’s self-titled 2007 debut, Joe Strummer and Sublime for Contra from 2010, Leonard Cohen for Modern Vampires of the City and the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, along with Phish, for Father of the Bride. The new album, he said, may reflect a short-lived tour he didn’t get to see: the 1997 pairing of Rage Against the Machine and Wu-Tang Clan.”

That new album, Only God Was Above Us. drops April 5th. It was previewed by the singles “Capricorn,” “Gen-X Cops.” and “Classical.” Vampire Weekend will support the release by going on a lengthy tour beginning in June; get tickets to all their upcoming dates here.

Vampire Weekend Tease “Punky,” “Jammy” Side Project
Wren Graves

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