PART 2 OF 2 | READ PART 1

At the end of last year, snappy Brooklyn quartet Vampire Weekend arrived in Sydney for a short promo tour. At the time, the group - vocalist Ezra Koenig, keyboard player, producer and multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij, drummer Chris Tomson and bassist Chris Baio - were on the eve of revealing their second album Contra to the world, the follow up to their surprise smash debut Vampire Weekend. A month later, Contra was released on January 11th 2010 and shocked nearly everyone by debuting at Number One in the US.

On a typically steamy Sydney summer's day in December, we met the band in the cool confines of the Oxford Arts Factory, the venue where later that night they would introduce a slew of Contra songs for a rapturously received crowd of fans and industry types. (See our review and photos of the show). During the afternoon, members of the band had been portioned out to media around the venue. It was our good fortune that we hooked up with keyboardist, guitarist and backing vocalist Rostam Batmangalij (above, second from right), who perhaps lesser known to some, is the producer and driving creative force behind the band. Interviews are by and large, determined by the interviewees position in the group, and as such, our lengthy, good natured and rambling discussion, revolved around the recording of the band, Batmangalij's approach to becoming a producer and his decision making process within the group.

So long was our chat - we went well over time - that we present it now in two parts. In this second portion, and with just a few listens to Contra for preparation, we talked about lyrical input, the homework of being a producer and the girl in the photo.

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Is it just Ezra that has input into the lyrics, or...

He wrote all the lyrics [on Contra] except for the songs 'Horchata' and 'Diplomat's Son', where we wrote lyrics together.

It seems like as lyricists you're still into that kind've, hierarchical 80's angle.

Wow...I dunno. There's some of that on our first record, but there's also elements of - I dunno pop from the 60's on the first record and I think that goes through this as well.

And class and inter-class relationships.

Yeah that's one of the themes. But there's also these big pop songs.

I'm not saying they're not pop songs. It's that not many people put those things in pop songs.

I dunno, I think you'd be surprised. Sometimes I wonder if the way that people interpret our band feeds into itself in some kind of weird way.

Of course it does because something like Pitchfork, if they go to town on a specific angle of a record, everyone paraphrases that. It becomes self-fulfilling.

I think the review of our record in Pitchfork though [for Vampire Weekend] - I think he kind've got it. I've read some other reviews by him since and they're all quite good actually.

You'll have to send him the record specifically.

(Laughs) You can't do that!

What's your drive when you sit down with a blank piece of paper? To write a lyric for these songs, that you know you have to play for so long, and so often, and to so many people. What does that give back to you with what you're singing about?

Well hopefully in both our music and lyrics we're trying to express some kind of open-mindedness. Ultimately, the idea's to do that in a way that's integral [to the music]. And not tacked on and not hitting you over the head. Is the goal. And hopefully that makes it possible to feel really good about all these songs we make.



Vampire Weekend - 'Oxford Comma'

Do you listen back to Vampire Weekend very much?

I think with the first record I did more - because it was the first record that I produced and the first record I was in charge of, really, what it sounded like. I did listen to it occasionally to compare it. All four of us were being interviewed by the New York Times once and someone asked us this question and I was suprised when everyone in the band said they didn't (laughs). I feel an obligation, especially with the way things sound. You know you can remember some things sounding really awesome. And then some things bad and uneven. And you come back to them and it sounds great. Or you come back to it and it sounds small and not right, or not the way you remembered it. So I think it is important on that level. But yeah, I kind of stepped away from it. I think you need to know when something is done.

Some people make music because something's missing in what they want to listen to.

Oh that's interesting. Julian Casablancas (The Strokes), there was quote of him I was reading where he said 'there's a time where you have to listen to something so much you can't listen to it ever again'. I think anyone who's ever recorded music can relate to that.

But it can also become a photograph of that time and eventually you get dissociated from it. Sometimes that can be quite meditative to listen to.

I know what you mean. It can also be hard to enjoy music when you've attached all those things to it. You have to accept that it is good (laughs).

If you didn't make those decisions then you wouldn't be in the position you are now.

Yeah you do have to make decisions. One thing that I've realised in making this record that I hadn't really realised before, is being a producer is making decisions. Which wasn't a role that before was, like, solidified. It was more in just recording the songs. There was an element with this record of having a realisation, 'you're obligation, you're job here is to make decisions. That's what you're here to do. And that was a little bit scary to realise. But also important I think.


Vampire Weekend - 'Cousins'
 

Did that realisation change the relationships in the band at all?

No cause I was always that person. I was always doing it, but I just didn't realise that's what it was about. And actually I talked to a couple of other producers on the way, because I wanted to know a little bit about their process. And that was enlightening. One of those guys was David Khan, who's done so many different records. One of them was the Sublime record, the second one. One was the Regina Spektor record, the one before her most recent. He did the third Stokes record, which I really love.

That's the one they don't like isn't it?

That's the one nobody likes (laughs). No the Strokes do like it, I think. I know the drummer does. I know him a little bit from being out in New York, and I know he likes that record. And the drums sound great. I asked (David Khan) about the process of making that record and I was really surprised when he told me that his work in making that was working on recording each person on an individual basis.

So he didn't approach it as a band?

No I think they'd gone through all the songs and they knew how to play them, but in terms of recording, it was just him and the person who's instrument he was recording at the time. The idea that the singer would come in every night for a couple of weeks and do multiple takes of multiple songs. These things seem obvious, but really until you think about it, it just didn't seem like it was possible [for us] to do that. So that was one realisation. You know, that you can do things any way you want, that you can spend as long as you want doing anything. Or you can work individually with different people if you want to. Or the whole band can be there. Like I know some bands where everyone is always there for everything that gets recorded. The bands record the vocals with everybody in the room. Whereas other people have as few people in the room as possible.

So what did you end up doing?

(Laughs) It was just a huge mixture of stuff.

How was it different from the debut then?

It wasn't that different. Just by nature of the fact that we all had jobs at the time [of recording Vampire Weekend]. Like we were [often] working, so one on one was often the case. Or working with a mixture, working by different teams and configurations. So hopefully one of the secrets of our band is that we don't just do things in one way.

What did you take then from that discovery? If it just made you end up come back full circle to doing it the same way as the first time around?

I realised that some things you can change and make better. And then other times, recording vocals with just the two people that need to be there in an apartment with a comfortable space with time to spare - that's actually a great way to record vocals. In fact that's an ideal situation. Sometimes in recording the first album, I was sub-letting an apartment, and I didn't think that this could be an ideal recording space. Just with a laptop and an apartment, a small room. I didn't realise that that can be a great way to record. In fact a lot of people do stuff like that. With the first record there was an element of just getting it done [in the studio] and not thing about how the constraints might be affecting it.

But with that kind of process, even in the studio, there's always going to be things that prevent it from being perfect. You can try going into a studio for $3000 a day. But thousands and millions of records have been made like that. So you end up making a record that sounds like every other record. But if you plug into your apartment's kitchen, you've got something that no-one else has. In the way it affects your performance, the acoustics etc. It's your key into making your own little, world. Which is where good records come from.

Yes. I agree with that. I think [also] we all have a better sense of how to work. In some ways, things that were just the way it happened to go on the first record, are somehow now more codified and we know how it should go in our process.

It's been a mixture of confidence and lack thereof. I've always felt strongly that I knew what I was doing. In fact more when I was younger, y'know? (Laughs). Defnitely.



The presentation of the record, with the cover photo and whatnot, do you think you're perpetuating some of those criticisms that people levelled at you the first time around? Geek-chic, and so on?

(Laughs). Well hopefully I think what we're trying to say with the record cover is that you can't really make assumptions. And you shouldn't make assumptions. And things are not the way they appear.

Is that what attracted you to the photo the first time? Did you make assumptions about it?

It was a picture I found becasue I was interested in New York city in the early '80s. I read a biography about the artist Basquiat, so I was thinking a lot about New York in the '80s. I found this picture and it was a polaroid, like our first record was a polaroid. And I quickly mocked it up. Like I wrote our bandname and Contra, you know. And I think that what we all drew from it was that you couldn't take one thing away from it. And everyone seemed to have a different response. To what was being conveyed in her expression. One of my best friends, I showed it to her. And then weeks later I showed it to her again. And she was like 'Is that still the album cover?'. And I was like 'Yeah'. And she said 'You made such a good decision because it really sticks with you'. Hopefully it works on a bunch of levels

And how does the subject feel about it?

Well it was taken in New York in 1983.

But you must've gotten permission?

Yeah we did. She lives in California now.

And it will be on someone's bedroom wall in Sydney. Has she thought that far ahead?

(Laughs) I wonder whose bedroom wall in Sydney it's on?

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Contra is out now. (Read our review). Vampire Weekend will be in Australia for most of May, headlining the Groovin' the Moo festival, as well as playing a series of sideshows:

May 1 - Groovin The Moo, VIC
May 2 - Groovin The Moo, QLD,
May 4 - Palace Theatre (SOLD OUT), VIC
May 5 - Palace Theatre (SOLD OUT), VIC
May 6 - AEC - Theatre, SA
May 8 - Groovin The Moo, NSW
May 9 - Groovin The Moo, ACT
May 11 - Tivoli Theatre (SOLD OUT), QLD
May 12 - Enmore Theatre (SOLD OUT), NSW
May 13 - Enmore Theatre, NSW
May 15 - Groovin The Moo, Bunbury WA
May 16 - Metro City, Perth WA