Vampire Weekend - “Mansard Roof” [ listen here ] [ buy here ]

I can’t help myself! This damn band is under my skin.

When we last partied with Vampire Weekend, we were hopping around to the afrobeat pop of “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”, and for this second round with the NYC champs (and Rolling Stone magazine’s “Hot New Kids”) we have the gorgeous “Mansard Roof.”

The bounce is still there (minus so-much afrobeat) and it is so crazy–like an out-of-balance spin cycle or someone fast-walking with one leg shorter than the other. But that’s not the gorgeous part. This thing has a vocal melody … Oh, man. Girls and boys will swoon. The time is just 2:07, so we only get to sing along three times. Ready, set …

XL Recordings begins teasing the Jan., 2008 debut of VW’s first album by releasing “Mansard Roof” as a single next week (Oct. 23), and the band will be following up its short run of Europe dates supporting the Shins with an autumn trip through the midwest and the west.

And … some Mansard Roofs:

[ website ] [ myspace ] [ XL Recordings ]

Vampire Weekend - “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”

Oh my. This song… this is that other kind of good. Not just sing-into-my-thumb while driving out of town this weekend good. Not just send-immediately-to-the-top of my Best of ’07 year-end mix good. This is more like, I’m going to throw-a-series-of-parties and use this song as the theme good. No decorations or party drinks necessary. I’ll just crowd all my friends around the computer speakers and we’ll listen on repeat and dance and laugh and pat each other on the back till dawn over and over until winter comes.

Life is better now.

This is the kind of song and the kind of band hyperbole was made for. And the timing couldn’t be any more perfect. Not just for a new favorite song, but also for my first post on the first day of this blog of new favorite songs. Vampire Weekend is the first band I’ve called my new favorite band in over two years (sorry, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah).

There are touchstones everywhere and I will restrain myself and just point out that, if Paul Simon’s Graceland album was its own style of music (and it kind of was), this one Vampire Weekend song is riffing heavily from that style and doing it very well. But that’s enough of that. This is too fun to worry about what came first.

What’s it sound like?

In the dorms, a freshman rehearses a bright guitar melody over and over through a paper thin practice amp. A drum circle has broken out in the hallway. Someone upstairs puts Graceland on the turntable. A boy asks a girl, “Is your bed made? Is your sweater on?”

See?

Or, look at the picture for the 7” below—that’ll do as well.

Of course, there is also the scene Vampire Weekend singer/guitarist Ezra Koenig is painting here. It’s a seemingly wholesome one, with a young girl and her Louis Vuitton, sitting on linens on a sandy lawn, and the boy who wants to “stay up to see the dawn” … and maybe do some other stuff too.

The words, to this and all of the various V.W. songs, set an east coast/Ivy League scene that invites you into the good life, dancing along to the soft, bouncy beat. “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” is just one of many songs that I wanted to show off here. “Walcott,” “Oxford Comma,” and the perfect “Mansard Roof” (with a melody from God, and a release as a single on XL Recordings coming Oct. 22) veer away from the afrobeat and do the job as your new favorite subtly expressive little pop songs. The cool kids are already all over this crew of Columbia University pals, and the months leading up to the Jan., 2008 release of Vampire Weekend’s first (label-produced) full-length on XL (home of The White Stripes, Dizzee Rascal and M.I.A.) will give sufficient time for things to snowball.

But it’s not so late that this lowly west-coast columnist can’t get in contact with the band’s singer/guitarist and ask a few dorky questions about this fun song and have him be totally rad and take the time to email back some answers. Enjoy:

My dorky Q&A with Vampire Weekend singer/guitarist Ezra Koenig:

This tune is so fresh sounding and almost indescribably fun. How do you feel about it?
We feel great about it. It was one of the first songs we recorded and we were happy to get the vibe we wanted with it.

Is this song a story that comes from your life, or is it a dreamed-up scene?
It’s kind of a montage of different scenes from my life—definitely not an explicit incident.

I can’t wait to dance along to this tune live. Any idea when V.W. will make it to California? Speaking of dancing along live, how does that usually go? Any good stories? Any advice?
We’ll be back in California in December. We can’t wait. We’ve had some great dancers in the audience at shows. Sometimes I worry that the non-dancers will judge the dancers and their dance-spirit. I’d probably have my arms crossed at a show too, but different strokes to RULE the world.

That insane little break/rhythm hiccup thing on the second “feels so unnatural…” kills me every time. How’d that make it into this world?
Those triplet arpeggios? Rostam [Batmanglij] came up with those rhythms because he felt like it was sounding like Weezer. I think he made a good call!

Just to be clear, the words are “Do you wanna ‘fa’”—right?
It depends on the day, but almost always something with an “f”.

Is any band having more fun than Vampire Weekend?
Maybe Andrew WK … I love that guy.

How does Cape Cod feel about having its own Kwassa Kwassa?
Haven’t been there in a while. I hope people are appreciating the song.

I have to say that it is so fun to sing along with the falsetto “doooooooo”. I do it while driving, and it almost brings a tear to my eye.
Thank you!

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