Ezra Koenig is the singer and primary songwriter for Vampire Weekend, whose 2019 LP, “Father of the Bride,” debuted at No. 1 on t he Billboard chart and won the Grammy for best alternative music album. I asked him about how the album was frequently likened by critics — sometimes favorably, sometimes not — to jam bands like the Grateful Dead and Phish.
In coverage of a song like “Harmony Hall,” there was a recurring theme of “Vampire Weekend is being provocative by having these jam-band signifiers. They’re being contrarian or they’re challenging the audience.” Was that your intention? To a large extent it was just looking for what we thought was cool in the unfashionable pile. I legitimately think that Phish are more inspiring, forward-thinking, exciting and talented than a lot of what was higher up in the cool hierarchy. There might have been stuff when I was 14 that I thought was cooler than jam bands, for whatever reason. And then I just flipped. It’s not my gut anymore. I’m familiar with a certain type of hierarchy of cool. I know it. The artistic part of me just doesn’t buy it anymore.
When I started listening to jam bands, I had a fantasy that it was almost an escape from what you’re talking about — a way to step outside the taste wars. Of course, now I know that was a very simplified view; there are jam-band snobs and all of that. Definitely. I’m hesitant to talk too much about it, because I get concerned about stolen jam valor. If you go deep into the world of the Grateful Dead and you know too much about it, the idea of ever being like “I was influenced by this band” almost becomes embarrassing, because you’re referencing, what — this incredibly unique world that a talented group of people built over decades? And you’re just going to throw that in as a reference for your little song?
This is a broad-stroke, reductive view, but there is something about the jam-band ethos that feels pleasantly removed from the hard-core branding-and-marketing side of almost every other genre of music. You could poke holes in that argument so easily — I recognize that. But to some extent it does stand apart.
My adult life has almost exactly tracked the rise of social media. When Vampire Weekend started, it was the MySpace era, and then as Vampire Weekend became established and there were people vaguely interested in what I had to say, that’s when Twitter started. There’s something about taste and social media that I guess has probably given me a little bit of a contrarian streak. I did an interview where I said something like, “I like to look at things that are uncool and find the cool in them,” but that’s wrong. It’s not “cool” — what I was really saying is, I’m interested in things that are unfashionable. Because nothing’s uncool. Things are unfashionable.
I recognize the extent to which it’s all mirrors anyway. You like what you like, but you also like music that makes you look a certain way, and you try to avoid music that makes you look a different way. You want to be similar to people who are cool, but not so similar that you lose it. It’s all this big goofy game of signifiers, and if you think about it too much, you can almost be like, Wait, do I like anything?
I love that there’s a superficial layer to music that’s as simple as what genre is it, who’s singing it, what is their niche. And then there’s the level of what are they referencing, how do they do it differently, what does it mean to reference that in 2020. I feel a real kinship with critics; at a certain point what we’re all doing is interpreting the culture around us and saying something about it. But what’s interesting is when you transcend the little mood board of being like, “I think this is on trend right now.” What’s interesting is when you talk about: What do things mean?
You’ve changed how you approach live shows. Early on you said they felt like a promotional obligation, but now you’ve moved toward having them be a place where you can do things you can’t do on records. My first love was recorded music, not live music. So to some extent getting more into this interplay between the record and the live show, I started to look at that as an art form in and of itself. If you’re in the jam world, if you’re a Deadhead, it’s like, Of course! That’s all there is. But in the world that I was more familiar with, the idea that you would let a song like “Sunflower” be two and a half minutes on record, but you would let it open up live and show the ways in which that riff is durable and flexible — the idea that you wouldn’t lay all that out in the recording? When you’re going to be literally graded and judged on it? The idea that you would let that record be a small little feed that you can have fun with much later? It’s a different way of thinking. It’s a different art form.
I guess jamminess is an aesthetic. You either find it cool or you don’t. But also it’s a way of approaching a music career.
Steven Hyden is the author of four books, including “This Isn’t Happening: Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ and the Beginning of the 21st Century,” out in September. He last wrote for the magazine about the national mood. Arielle Bobb-Willis is a photographer from New York who was recently featured in Aperture’s “The New Black Vanguard.” This is her first assignment for the magazine.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Stylist: Evan Simonitsch. Grooming: Candice Birns.
Additional design and development by Jacky Myint.
Source: Music - nytimes.com
