Vampire Weekend Have Announced Their First Show in Four Years

Just after the 10-year anniversary of their self-titled debut album, Vampire Weekend have announced their first show in four years. Ezra Koenig and company will headline the U.K.’s End of the Road Festival this fall. End of the Road runs from Aug. 31 through Sept. 3, with additional headliners including St. Vincent, Feist, Yo La Tengo, Ezra Furman and Jeff Tweedy.

The last proper live shows Vampire Weekend played were the Reading and Leeds Festivals in 2014—coincidentally, Reading 2014 was also the most recent performance from another soon-to-be-resurgent indie-rock institution: Arctic Monkeys.

Members of Vampire Weekend have given individual performances since 2014—such as when Koenig and Chris Tomson played a Bernie Sanders rally in 2016—but End of the Road, ironically, seems to signal the band’s long-awaited return to the road as a unit. Rostam Batmanglij left the band in 2016 and has since found success as a solo artist—it’s unclear whether he’ll be involved.

Vampire Weekend’s first new album since 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City is expected out sometime this year. The band worked on the record with previous collaborators Ariel Rechtshaid and Batmanglij, with Koenig listing Kanye West and Kacey Musgraves as influences in a recent interview. The album’s wonderful working title is Mitsubishi Macchiato, and according to a tweet Koenig posted last September, the album was “80% done” at that point.

80% done but the last 20% is always the hardest

— Ezra Koenig (@arzE) September 4, 2017

Read our 10-year retrospective on Vampire Weekend right here and listen to their 2007 Daytrotter Session below.