Earlier this year, Vampire Weekend released a vinyl-only live album, Frog on the Bass Drum Vol. 01, featuring songs they played on tour in Indianapolis in June 2019. Included with the LP was a newsletter featuring a band update from drummer Chris Tomson, who wrote, “Ezra [Koenig] took a raga singing lesson with Terry Riley in rural Japan and wrote what he considers to be 7 of his all-time top 10 best songs.” He also teased, “LP news by the end of the year. It’s close to done and I feel like it just might be our best yet. 10 songs, no skips.”
Vampire Weekend are now readying the release of Frog on the Bass Drum Vol. 02, capturing a July 2019 concert in Milan, Italy. Bassist Chris Baio wrote the new LP’s accompanying newsletter, concluding it emphatically: “LP5 IS DONE.” A representative for Vampire Weekend also confirmed to Pitchfork that the album is finished.
Koenig gave his own update on the group’s Father of the Bride follow-up during an interview with Mark Hoppus in 2021, telling the Blink-182 singer that he’d been recording in England and Los Angeles. “Sometimes I oversell how close we are with the record because who really knows?” Koenig said. “But we almost have an album’s worth of songs. And, as you well know, you could tinker with a song forever; change the arrangement, change the lyrics, whatever. But, in that sense we’re close. I have no idea how long it’ll take to finish, but we’re feeling really good about the new material.”
Vampire Weekend played a number of festival dates last year and will perform at Primavera Sound Barcelona in May.