Continuing a delightfully unorthodox publicity blitz in advance of their fifth album, Only God Was Above Us, indie stalwarts Vampire Weekend have scheduled a midday concert in Austin, Texas for April 8, timed to coincide with the upcoming solar eclipse. Taking place at the Moody Amphitheater starting at noon local time (roughly an hour and a half before the great cosmic ballet reaches its peak), the concert will be livestreamed via Veeps.
Vampire Weekend on tour in 2019, the last time they had new music on offer.
Per a press release: “Austin will be directly in the path of the total solar eclipse. The entire show will be broadcast live on the premiere streaming platform Veeps, allowing Vampire Weekend fans across the globe to be a part of this unique experience. Individual tickets to the broadcast will be available for free, and it will also be available to Veeps All Access.”
The show will take place just days after the release date for Only God Was Above Us, which is scheduled to drop on April 5. The record will be the group's first new material since 2019's Grammy-winning Father of the Bride. The band has released three new songs from the album thus far: "Gen-X Cops," "Capricorn," and most recently, "Classical," which debuted via a green-screen-heavy video last week.
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In the meantime, the band has seemingly been having some fun shaking up the typical rituals of album promotion, starting with the fact that the record's completion was not announced with a press release, but rather in a "newsletter" that accompanied the vinyl-only release of a live concert recording for members of the band’s record club. (Said newsletter then proceeded to place that news at the end of a long update which also included bassist Scott Baio's memories of the group's first experiences performing in Italy, a discussion of Oregon's sand dunes, and a recipe for lamb pappardelle.)
Last week, Vampire Weekend also launched their new Vampire Campfire podcast, in which Baio was joined around a firepit by bandmates Ezra Koenig and Chris Tomson.
The band will be embarking on an extensive North American tour in June.
"We're in this weird zone right now," Koenig said in the first episode. "Where we announced the album, I think the art tells a story, the video tells a story and of course, the songs tell a story. But this is the modern world. You gotta create content. You gotta do press. And I found that in the past, people start asking about your influences or what the album's about –"
"You could say something impressionistic," Tomson interjected. "And that ends up setting a narrative or tone that is more serious than one might have intended."
"Exactly," Koening responded, later reading a stream-of-consciousness list of "influences" that included "whirling dervishes," "mistaken memories of medieval Manhattan," "New Wave hot dogs," and each member of the Wu-Tang Clan.
Proving they haven't necessarily re-thought every aspect of the album release cycle, Vampire Weekend will also be heading out on a marathon North American tour in support of the record, kicking off in Houston in June, and ending right back in Austin later in October.
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