Through his own channels, including his Beats 1 show Time Crisis, Vampire Weekend‘s Ezra Koenig has offered up scattered information about the band’s upcoming fourth album, Father Of The Bride. The New York City indie troupe are currently leading up to the album with double song drops every month, with standout songs “Harmony Hall” and “Sunflower” already getting music videos to go along with it. But in a recent interview with The Sunday Times, Koenig went deeper than he has yet, including offering up tidbits on the actual content of his new songs, even though people haven’t heard most of them yet.
The interview, as pointed out by Stereogum, features Koenig saying that he prefers the people hear the album before reading about what the songs are about, but still gives a load of information about the record. The likely next single, “Unbearably White,” is somewhat about why “infighting among white people about who is marginally more or less white is not particularly interesting.” Another track is a country song that offers a duet with Danielle Haim. Haim features on other songs on the record, too, while the album’s opener samples Hans Zimmer’s score for The Thin Red Line. Finally, album closer “Jerusalem, New York, Berlin,” references a post-WWI pro-Palestine declaration. For a band that is traditionally hyper-literate and actively engaged, Father Of The Bride does not seem to change things on this front.
Also in the interview, Koenig discussed his campaigning for Bernie Sanders in 2016 and revealed he will continue to support him in 2020. Koenig spoke about it:
“I like to believe he’s less of a sociopath than a lot of people who want to be president, but it’s hard to be as excited as I was in 2016. That was the first time I felt deeply about a candidate. I also subscribe to the belief that Trump doesn’t represent an upheaval so much as a moment of clarity about the way things have always been. Which isn’t to say there aren’t uniquely horrifying things happening, but there were under every administration.”
Father Of The Bride is out on May 3 via Sony Music.
