Just happy to be heard — Vampire Weekend still pinches itself when thousands of fans show up at its concerts.
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Judging purely by their pristine production, eloquent lyrics and Abercrombie and Fitch fashion sense, it’s easy to imagine the members of Vampire Weekend as pretentious rich kids at the musical country club. However, while the international dalliances of this self-described “Upper West Side Soweto” quartet did begin during their tenure at Columbia University, they actually spent their extracurricular hours goofing off, making amateur films (one of which provided the band’s name) and founding the Lonely Island-inspired comedy-rap troupe L’Homme Run. Sample lyrics from the song “Pizza Party”: “If you wanna come then pick up the phone/ Don’t get caught with a wack calzone!”
“That was really the only precursor to Vampire Weekend, and it was lots of fun, but eventually inspired us to form a more straightforward band,” chuckles drummer Chris Tomson. “That said, it was hip hop and had a sense of humour, but wasn’t purely a joke. I still listen to some of those songs and think they’re pretty good.”
Four years after forming Vampire Weekend, these well-dressed wise-guys have now far surpassed their frat-boy roots — performing to sold-out concert halls and on festival stages across Europe, making the rounds of the late-night TV circuit and hitting No. 1 on Billboard with their sophomore album, Contra. Tomson chalks much of this up to being in the right place at the right time, and still pinches himself repeatedly to prove he isn’t dreaming.
“When we first started and were talking about labels we’d like to be on, XL was definitely at the top of the list,” he says. “So, when they actually signed us, that was a huge moment for sure. When I quit my job to play in the band full-time, that was another one, and there’s been a lot more along the way. The first big festival we played was Glastonbury in the U.K. When you step onstage to a crowd of 35, 000 people, you just feel ridiculous.”
Alongside landing their second Saturday Night Live performance on the show’s March 6 edition hosted by Zach Galifianakis (“I really would have liked to take part in one of the sketches,” Tomson jokes. “Maybe next time.”), another recent accolade is the band’s star-studded music video for Contra’s “Giving Up the Gun.” Cameos in the tennis-themed clip include no less than the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, Lil Jon, Jake Gyllenhaal and Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers.
“The idea was to create something surreal, so we cast whoever we could and were available,” explains Tomson. “We’d never met any of those people before the shoot, but we know Joe Jonas was a fan because he came to one of our shows in Los Angeles. The RZA and Lil John were both sweet, down-to-earth guys, too.”
As Tomson is the first to admit, there’s a chance none of this would have happened in the pre-download era. In this case, it was Vampire Weekend’s so-called “Blue CD-R” demos that blew up the blogosphere, later resulting in the first-ever Spin magazine cover for a band yet to release their debut album proper.
“I think sometimes people wonder if we’re obsessed with listeners stealing our music,” Tomson says. “Really, it would have been hard for us to succeed the way we have without the ease of downloading. We’re very conscious of how the Internet helped us spread our songs. That’s how the label heard of us, and that’s how we were able to tour six months before the first album came out, and still had people singing along.”
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