Vampire Weekend will release its next album May 7.
The group posted the words “Vampire Weekend LP3 COMPLETE” over Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s famous painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware River on its website. The image alternates with a shot of the quartet on a bridge with the dates May 6/7 (May 6 will be the ex-U.S. release date). It”s the band”s first album since 2010″s “Contra.” The group had confirmed a new album would appear in 2013, but now we have an actual release date.
It took almost two years of writing and recording to complete the still-untitled set, Vampire Weekend singer/guitarist Ezra Koenig told Rolling Stone. “Sometimes we thought we were done, but it”s always very apparent when you”re not.”
He and multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij wrote the set, which includes “Unbelievers,” a tune the group played on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” last October, as well as a rockabilly-oriented track called “Diane Young” and another called “Obvious Bicycle.”
The album has a more organic sound, according to Koenig. “Things that we might have found boring in the past, we”ve started to find more fresh. This record has more piano and acoustic guitar and organ,” he told the magazine.