Some six years since their last album, “Modern Vampires of the City,” Vampire Weekend has dropped two new songs — “Harmony Hall” and “2021” — that are the first to come from their forthcoming fourth album, “Father of the Bride,” due this Spring on Columbia Records.
Bandleader Ezra Koenig spoke with Beats 1 Wednesday about the new songs. “’Harmony Hall’ has a lot of ideas in it and there’s something exciting about coming out of the gate with a five minute song, and then ‘2021’ seemed like interesting counterbalance because [‘Harmony’] is this five minute song and then [‘2021’] is like a minute-40 song. I’ve always loved dropping songs in twos, and there’s something for us that just feels good about always showing two sides of the album. So I think this is a very small taste of the whole record but this gives a little bit of a sense of what you might expect.”
In the six years since Vampire Weekend’s last album, cofounder Rostam Batmanglij left the band for a solo career (although he remains a contributor and is listed as an additional producer on “Harmony Hall”) and Koenig co-wrote and produced Beyonce’s song “Hold Up,” released his Netflix anime series “Neo Yokio,” and continued to host his Time Crisis show on Beats1.
“Harmony Hall” was written by Koenig and produced by Koenig with longtime collaborator Ariel Rechtshaid (Haim, Adele, Troye Sivan) & Ezra Koenig, with additional production by Batmanglij; “2021” was written by Koenig with Yellow Magic Orchestra cofounder Haruomi Hosono and produced by Rechtshaid and Koenig.