On Rostam Batmanglij’s Departure from Vampire Weekend
Reading this memo from Rostam on Twitter today left me stunned. As an essential role in Vampire Weekend, the singer and producer worked on some of the most important albums of my life—VW’s self-titled debut, Contra, and Modern Vampires of the City happily soundtracked the entirety of my high school career and many of my teenage years.
I was fortunate enough to see the original band perform live, too. Hearing Rostam’s opening notes on “Mansard Roof” for the first time, experiencing my first concert ever, and watching all of their music videos as they were released (including the beautiful typographic lyric video for the equally charming “Step”) were formative moments in my life as a devoted music fan.
As a result of all of this coming to a rapid change with Rostam departing from Vampire Weekend, you might expect me to be really sad about the matter. Oddly enough, I’m not; I actually feel very optimistic about the outcome of this group and all of its members.
I am a huge fan of Rostam’s solo work, and although some of his best material was through the band, I’m excited to see where this next journey will take him as a talented solo artist. And it’s not like Vampire Weekend is ending, either. Rostam noted that he will even continue to collaborate on future VW songs outside of the band.
So while all of this news is very sudden and unexpected, and the far future of Vampire Weekend becomes a little foggier now, I believe things are still going to end up alright for us fans. And honestly, that’s probably what the original group as a whole would want us to feel—optimism, and even happiness, for any possible outcomes.