Music

Everyone Is Wildly Guessing What Vampire Weekend’s New Album Is Called

Friends Of The Beach? Full On Tuberculosis? Father Of The Bride?

by Jared Richards  22 January 2019
Vampire Weekend's new album has the initials 'FOTB'

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Last week, Vampire Weekend announced that their long, long awaited fourth album would be coming soon. To make up for the six-year wait between songs, it’s going to be a double-album with 18 tracks — and we’ll be hearing our first snippet this Friday.

Frontman Ezra Koenig announced the album via a lengthy Instagram post attached to a screenshot of a folder on his computer called ‘FOTB’, which he explains are the initials of the title.

Previously, it had the overwhelmingly twee working title of Mitsubishi Macchiato, which Koenig calls “a helpful guiding principle”. The album was mixed by Ariel Rechtshaid, who produced Modern Vampires Of The City, their 2013 album.

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While no announce date has been announced, we’ll be hearing a lot of it super soon — Koenig says he plans to release six songs a month in three bursts until the album is out, “though plans can change”. By our math, that means the album will be out in full by April.

But with little to go off before Friday, fans are wildly guessing what the album could be called, with Koenig regularly posting some of his favourites to his Instagram story. It’s not too far-fetched to say someone will get it, either — when Kanye West posted the initials ‘TLOP’ on Twitter in 2016, one fan correctly guessed his new album would be called The Life Of Pablo.

On Koenig’s post, the guessing game was pretty much immediately in full force. Some of our favourites over there were ‘Flight Of The Bumblebee’, suggested by The Lumineers, ‘Foot Of The Ball’, ‘Fennel Or The Beet’, ‘Frogs On The Bayou’, ‘Frightened Otter Teaches Bulgarian’ and ‘Freaks Of The Brooklyn’, which… sounds incredibly plausible.

Then Pitchfork asked their Twitter followers what they thought it could be, which prompted some snappy answers.

The Guardian music journalist Laura Snapes suggested ‘Father Of The Bride’, which makes sense: Koenig and co. would of course love a ’90s Steve Martin, Nancy Meyers-produced comedy film. Plus, as she suggests, it’s a double-album, which makes it “one disc for each part of the greatest movie franchise of all time”.

In a now deleted tweet, Blink 182 guitarist Mark Hoppus suggested ‘Fanic At The Bisco’, which Brendon Urie co-signed. Was it deleted because Hoppus was on the money? Did Vampire Weekend silence Blink 182? Who can say.

Other excellent suggestions include “Frank Ocean’s Tickle Bonanza”, “Fam: Obtain This Bread” and “Freshly Opened Toblerone Bar”, a reference to Koenig’s excellent Netflix anime, Neo Yokio.

Whatever ‘FOTB’ stands for, fever excitement is swelling. The album will mark the first time new Vampire Weekend music’s been released since Rostam Batmanglij left the band in 2016, focusing on producing and releasing solo music. Batmanglij co-wrote many of Vampire Weekend’s songs with Koenig.

Read Koenig’s full album announcement below, and wildly speculate over on his Instagram page.

View this post on Instagram

To the fans:⁣ I know that 5-6 years is considered a long time between records. Personally, I think it’s a dignified pace befitting a band that’s already placed three albums in stores but everyone has their own sense of time. (I swear the time between 3 & 4 felt shorter to me than 2 & 3. I may be in the minority on this one.) ⁣ ⁣ This album didn’t really take any longer to write/record than MVOTC. We just took more time on the front end to chill. I’ll admit I may have stretched out the mixing/mastering process (aka THE END) a little bit cuz spending half the day with my family & half the day at Ariel’s is my ideal life-rhythm & it’s painful to say goodbye to that rhythm.⁣ ⁣ Many of you have been hungry for information and we’ve given you very little. I don’t like talking abt a project while in the middle of making it. I usually regret everything I say cuz it turns out to be wrong (so disregard anything I may have said in the past 5 years.) I thought abt making a recording diary to tide over the people leaving intense comments but…to me, the album IS the recording diary…man.⁣ ⁣ It’s called “FOTB” (well those are the initials – that’s a VW tradition) and it’s 18 songs. Picked the name a few years ago. At some point early on, the album drifted from the Mitsubishi Macchiato aesthetic. It was a helpful guiding principle tho. Working titles are important too.⁣ ⁣ It’s a lot of songs but they all belong there. (If you disagree, you can always say it was 6 songs too long & make a lil 12-song playlist version of it.) At first, I wanted to make two 23-song albums on some human chromosome shit but then 23&me started doing Spotify playlists and I don’t know…felt we’d been scooped.⁣ ⁣ Is it a double album? The vinyl will be double so…yes? It’s about 59 minutes long. We can talk more abt that later – if u care. To me, it’s just FOTB.⁣ ⁣ Anyway, we’re gonna start releasing music next week. After all that waiting, you should have the general schedule:⁣ ⁣ -There will be three 2-song drops every month until the record is out. 1. hh/2021 2. s/bb 3. tl/uw. (plans can change that’s the plan)⁣ ⁣ Thank you for ur patience,⁣ Ezra

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