T IN THE PARK
THE SOWETAN SMELL OF SUCCESS
It’s hard work being in a globally successful breakthrough world/funk/ pop band. Chris Baio of Vampire Weekend finally manages a chat with David Pollock 24 THE LIST 8–22 Jul 2010
T he List can’t stop thinking of Anne Rice, although her Interview With the Vampire was possibly just a little more fraught than our interview with Vampire Weekend. Still, six weeks and probably more than a couple of continents after our request to speak to them was made (they were in Australia the first time), and after countless emails batted back and forth between their harangued ‘people’, we finally hear back from bassist Chris Baio – on the weekend they played Glastonbury. Why, they pretty much came to us, just about.
Still, we’re lucky to have heard back at all, because this is the year things exploded for Vampire Weekend. Probably as surprising to the quartet as anyone else, their second album Contra went to number one in the US album charts, and from then on it’s been a race around the globe to capitalise on its success. Already, in this summer of an African World Cup (not that the fact might have caused such striking parallels in the football-ambivalent US, their homeland), imitators of their decidedly distinctive sound are springing up.
‘IF YOU TOLD ME FOUR YEARS AGO WE’D HAVE A NUMBER ONE ALBUM, I’D HAVE THOUGHT YOU WERE CRAZY’
‘Why, there’s always been an African element to our music,’ these imitators might well say, or, ‘there’s always been an ambition to attend an Ivy League university within our band.’ Yet none of them carry off the VW-named (for better or worse) ‘Upper West Side Soweto’ sound or the preppy politeness of boys who went to Columbia University so well, and surely few could match the intensive gigging and festival- bagging effected by these boys so far this year. ‘I really love the Hove festival in Norway,’ says Baio of his favourite festival event in the world. ‘It’s in a pretty remote area and the sun doesn’t set until way late at night. Two years ago I had the pleasure of seeing Jay-Z headline at