The year of the vampire

Twelve months ago, they were the best-kept secret in rock'n'roll - four ambitious New York college boys whose musical tastes swung from gangsta rap to classical to African pop. Tomorrow, Vampire Weekend take to the stage at Oxegen under the banner of "most exciting festival prospect". A year can be a long time in pop, they tell Jim Carroll The festival weekend's not-to-be-missed performances, courtesy of Jim Carroll

A YEAR ago, admit it, you hadn't heard of them. You hadn't realised then that they were about to become one of your new favourites. You didn't even know they existed.Well, you weren't alone.

Vampire Weekend may have been getting a spot of love from some of the bloggeratti, but it was small potatoes, the kind of love which doesn't pay for enough petrol to get a band to and from a gig.

A year ago, Vampire Weekend were still playing small rooms in their hometown. They were New Yorkers who cut their teeth playing on and around the campus at Columbia University, where members first met.

By summer 2007, school was out and the band were singing for their supper in the real world. Many onlookers, though, simply didn't see or hear anything to get excited about. Vampire Weekend were a bunch of preppy oddballs with lyrics about obscure points of punctuation and campus dramas, with a sound that was in thrall to jangly African guitars. Vampire Weekend were completely out of sync with the indie weather vane.

But the weather can turn. Singer Ezra Koenig remembers when things began to change last summer. They'd play shows at their usual haunts and notice that the audience faces they knew outnumbered those they didn't. Record labels began to turn up to run the rule over them. They had to move to bigger rooms to squeeze everyone in. The buzz got louder.

As Vampire Weekend have learned, a year is a long time in pop. Since last summer, they've released a swashbuckling, joyous debut album and gigged and toured and talked about themselves until they're fit to be tied. The songs they wrote back in New York have taken them far and wide. They will continue in this manner across continents until late September at least.

None of this phases Koenig. As he talks - and he's quite happy to tease out every angle in a question ­- it becomes obvious that Vampire Weekend were a group who existed long before the four members ever picked up their instruments.

"We're the kind of people who would happily spend a lot of time sitting around intellectualising music," he says. "The name and some of the ideas were talked about for ages first, and we only started practising when we had a show to play."

When they did start to play together, the songs came quickly - "they were certainly not laboured over." From the off, they were at odds with what everyone else was doing. Rhythms and melodies from the African high-life pop which all four listened to found their way into the songs.

"It started with Oxford Comma," says Koenig, "which has a vaguely African feel to it, and then it turned up again in Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa. It just seemed natural.

"Sure, we listened to a lot of African records. But the truth is that, at any given moment, the four of us are listening to a million different records. When Vampire Weekend was starting out, I was also listening to Leonard Cohen, but he hasn't had much impact on our music.

"The reason why we gravitated so much towards the African sound has to do with us being a band with guitar, drums and bass who didn't want to sound like the other bands who were around. So we looked to see if we could get ideas from other kinds of music.

"If you listening to a record that you want to consciously reference, you'll just end up ripping it off. With us, we listened to lots of African pop, internalised it and then tried to do our own version of it. For example, the riff on Cape Codis certainly not referencing any specific genre of African music or song, but is more us recalling some of the elements which inspired us about African music."

When it came to writing lyrics, Koenig tried to stay in a hip-hop fame of mind. He's a huge hip-hop fan, and one of his pre-Vampire Weekend gigs was with L'Homme Run, a rap act who wanted to be the new 3rd Bass, but never even got to first base.

"I can retroactively spot the rap thing on this album in certain ways. More than any other kind of music, rap has lyrics which delight in words and rhyming and references. One of the things about truly great rappers is how they can use metaphors to reference people or places. I spent a lot of time listening to The Beastie Boys, and every other line is a reference to some baseball or basketball player, even though that's not what the song is about. You can get away with a lot less of that in your standard pop ballad which takes about love and stuff."

Vampire Weekend's connection with Columbia University has been seized on by many detractors as a stick to beat them with, something Koenig believes has wider connotations.

"In America, there's a fear of coming across as being educated because education is linked very closely with class. It turns into this weird thing where to even know about certain things or have certain banks of knowledge is to push yourself into some corner as an elitist. It's a horrible idea, the notion that education is linked to a specific, snobby way of life."

As for occasional sneering at the content of their songs. "It seems that writing a smart song or even a song which references something like a Mansard roof gives people a certain impression of who you are, which inevitably turns out to be wrong.

"What's funny is that the music which has inspired me the most is hip-hop, and it is full of obscure references to all kinds of things from all around the world. The fact that singing about something obscure or not well known can make you an elitist is funny when you break it down and compare it with rap lyrics. I find that some of the most pretentious lyrics are talking about very vague, generalised things."

He remembers his Ivy League days fondly, though this doesn't mean he will go around sporting a Columbia sweatshirt at weekends. "That's what an investment banker will wear as his badge of identity with his alma mater. We don't own any of those sweatshirts, so our connection is through our songs.

"It's important to say that people do have their own individual experiences at college, and Columbia to us was about the band. Columbia is known to be an academically rigorous good school, but that doesn't mean that everyone there is smart or got in because of their super-good grades or are dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. Some people might want to go to a good school because it will help them get a high-paying job afterwards.

"The image of college we can relate to is a place where you can dedicate yourself to reading books and learning for a few years. It's a unique experience which most people have to give up after college for the rest of their lives."

When he graduated, Koenig landed a job in a school in Brooklyn. Teaching English and History to teenagers, in that year before the band took over his life, was an eye-opener after his cloistered college years.

"I came from a culture where you could relax a lot, pick the classes you wanted to go to and hang out with your friends. It was so intense to go from that into a situation where you had to try to be some kind of authority figure imposing discipline. I liked the kids and the experience, but it was rough."

Koenig won't likely be going back to that job anytime soon, yet he fervently believes that there's more to life than Vampire Weekend. You get the sense that he might well walk away from all this if something else came along to pique his curiosity.

"We've been very fortunate because things have happened so quickly for us. It's fairly mind-blowing to be doing these tours and playing these festivals. But I think all of us feel that this is not the only thing we could be doing. It's important for people to try other things in their lives. As much as I love pop music and how important it is to me, I know there are other things I might like to try."

For example, he could always pick up where he left off with his Internet Vibesblog, which gave him the space to write about everything from Ivy League sportswear to ruminations on why the population of Ireland is so small.

"I liked doing the blog because it allowed me to formulate my thoughts. In terms of starting it up again and having a normal blog as opposed to having a band blog, I just don't think I have the time right now to be an active participant. I think most people would just see it as a Vampire Weekend blog and I don't want that."

Vampire Weekend is out now on XL Records.  www.myspace.com/vampireweekend Vampire Weekend play the Green Room stage at the Oxegen festival in Punchestown on Saturday

Coming up for Oxegen

FRIDAY

If you miss White Denim (2fm New Band Stage, 12.30am), you will miss one of the live shows of the year; three Texan yahoos playing the most spirited garage rock imaginable. But Friday means you can also wig out to Battles (Pet Sounds, 7.10pm), check out where Bell X1 are at (Green Room, 11.40pm) or lose your marbles to Aphex Twin (Pet Sounds, 9.50pm). Other acts worth fighting the traffic on the N81 for include Tricky (Pet Sounds, 8.25pm), Cat Power (Pet Sounds, 11.50pm), MSTRKKRFT (Dance stage, 8.10pm) and The Go! Team (02 Stage, 10pm).

SATURDAY

Naturally, you will want to pay your respects to Vampire Weekend (Green Room, 6.35pm), but today is also the day to make merry at the New Band Stage with Alphabeat (8.15pm), Holy Fuck (5.10pm) and (6.15pm). There's every chance that either British Sea Power (Green Room, 5.30pm) or one-time hobo Seasick Steve (Pet Sounds, 7.40pm) could be the highlight of the weekend. Meanwhile, The Ting Tings (Green Room, 4.25pm) have at least six songs you can sing your head off to, and the Irish fan club for The National (Pet Sounds, 11.45pm) should increase significantly after their performance today. The IMRO New Sound stage swings into action, so add New Amusement (5.15pm) and (7.15pm) to your must-see list. And don't you dare forget Justice (Dance Stage, 11.45pm) bringing huge flashing crosses and bad-ass electro to Punchestown.

The SUNDAY

You're not getting tired, are you? Eddy Grant (main stage, 1.30pm) is aiming to make it a reggae sunsplash Sunday, while you'll probably be talking about the New Bands Stage performances of Jaguar Love (3.25pm), In Case of Fire (4.25pm) and The Script (6.20pm) for weeks to come. Pet Sounds is the go-to stage today with (5.15pm), Roisin Murphy (9.15pm) and The Swell Season (10.45pm) on their post-Oscar lap of honour, all holding court. The Raconteurs (9pm) and Republic of Loose (7.35pm) are two 02 Stage acts to get you on the good foot. The Hold Steady (Green Room, 2.20pm), Dry County (10.15pm) and Halves (8.15pm) are the pick of bunch on the IMRO New Sounds Stage. And the perfect end to the weekend for most will be Rage Against the Machine on the main stage (10.35pm) killing in the name of whatever you're having yourself.'