Vampire Weekend are “close” to having an “album’s worth of songs”.
Frontman Ezra Koenig has revealed the indie band have recorded new music in England and Los Angeles for their follow-up to 2019’s ‘Father of the Bride’.
Speaking to Mark Hoppus on his Apple Music Hits show, Ezra said of the time between the release of their last record and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their music-making: “It is crazy that it’s been three years.
“I mean, about a year and a half of it doesn’t count because of COVID.
“But, yeah. We’ve been working on music and we were just recording in England for a while, now back in LA, working with everybody and, yeah, I think we’re … I’m always hesitant to… Sometimes I oversell how close we are with the record because who really knows? But we almost have an album’s worth of songs.”
The 37-year-old rocker admitted that while they have plenty of new material in the works, he’s unable to offer up a release date they are aiming for, because “you could tinker with a song forever.”
He added: “As you well know, you could tinker with a song forever; change the arrangement, change the lyrics, whatever.
“But in that sense we’re close. I have no idea how long it’ll take to finish, but we’re feeling really good about the new material. So yeah, a lot of studio time to come after the holidays.”
The group’s last LP was the first without multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij, as he couldn’t commit to the group.
Ezra explained at the time: “We were each other’s first fans.
“But he was clear Vampire Weekend was one of multiple projects for him.”
While the record was the group’s first album in six years, the ‘Oxford Comma’ hitmaker insisted there wasn’t anything particularly negative about it taking so long.
He said: “Well, this wasn’t a six-year arduous journey. The simplest way to put it is: three years not working, a year of dipping my toes in, two of working really hard.”
In 2018, Ezra and his partner, Rashida Jones, welcomed their first child into the world and the singer admitted that was one of the reasons why the record was delayed.
He said: “I’m still getting used to talking about family. We’d prefer never to talk about it, but, without detail, yes, this album could have come out sooner if I cared less about spending time with my family.”