Koenig, now 25, is the lead singer and guitarist of Vampire Weekend , and the latest in a line of cultural observers who took an up-close look at wealth and class — and had mixed feelings about what they saw.
See Fitzgerald, F. His band-mates, all fellow Columbia grads — bassist Chris Baio, drummer Christopher Tomson and keyboardist-guitarist Rostam Batmanglij — come from relative comfort, the sons of attorneys and white-collar execs who grew up in the cul-de-sacs of Georgetown and Westchester.
But for various reasons, they all sit uncomfortably with their social status — like accidental trespassers in the halls of privilege. Keaton at a Young Republicans mixer. They might have been too subtle. Sometimes, the references to Hyannisport and Louis Vuitton fueled the perception that the bandmates themselves are bratty trust-funders.
Vampire Weekend met eight years ago, as undergraduates at Columbia. Koenig and Batmanglij bonded over Radiohead at a party during freshman year and vowed to start a band one day. Vampire Weekend played their first show in , at a battle of the bands in a campus basement.
They placed third out of four. Later that year, some of their demos appeared online, earning raves from sites like Stereogum and Pitchfork. Before they knew it, they were selling out shows and appearing on the cover of Spin without even having released an album. For all the divisiveness Vampire Weekend have inspired, they remain surprisingly grounded, and almost pathologically polite. Koenig reaches into his pocket and hands over a wrinkled O n a rainy Tuesday afternoon, Koenig is riding home in a taxi.
Spend some time with Koenig, and this will happen a lot. Koenig read it in high school, but when Carroll died in September, he decided to revisit it. For Halloween one year he dressed up as Sebastian, the drunken aristocrat from Brideshead Revisited.
Everyone thought he was a cricket player. Koenig kicks off his duck boots and plops down on the couch. Jazz Latin New Age. Aggressive Bittersweet Druggy. Energetic Happy Hypnotic. Romantic Sad Sentimental. Sexy Trippy All Moods. Drinking Hanging Out In Love. Introspection Late Night Partying. Rainy Day Relaxation Road Trip. Romantic Evening Sex All Themes. Articles Features Interviews Lists. Streams Videos All Posts.
Our power structure was around college; Brooklyn was distant. Were they conscious of stepping away from what might have otherwise become the soundtrack to a Pitchfork dinner party? It depends on your dinner party. Maturing suits them. I thought I was made to travel the world. To miss home, a good bagel, the colour of the sky … it just doesn't jive with the narrative of the artist.
You're supposed to be a citizen of the world but then you realise that's a stupid thing to aspire to. Ezra speaks like a throwback from s New York: clipped, nasal, articulate. It could come off as an affectation, and read like standoff-ish arrogance in print. But in person, he is quietly charming and intelligent with an undefinable star quality.
There are no errant words in his sentences, no gauche contemporary "likes" or "y'knows". Despite being the product of an age where over-stimulation and lack of attention span has apparently made it impossible for us to be bored and therefore, the theory goes, be creative , he philosophises a lot, too. About what it means to be in a band; about wanting money "I'm not ashamed to say it" ; about accepting it's OK not to be "cool". For instance: "It's great to be like everyone else, it's great to be able to identify what's important to you and respect what's important to other people and find a middle ground where you feel connected to people.
There's something narcissistic about thinking you're special and everyone else is boring, and if you end up doing normal things you're a loser. You have to find your way around that otherwise it will just fuck you up. Does that revelation come from the backlash Vampire Weekend suffered between their first and second albums?
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