Vampire Weekend's third album will be released this spring, according to a Q magazine article posted on the Team Vampire Weekend fan tumblr. Frontman Ezra Koenig called the still-untitled new record "darker" and more "organic," saying it feels like the end of a trilogy. "It really does feel like the third chapter in a book," Koenig told Q. "We created some characters on the first record, some of which are real people, some of which are ourselves, so it's not hard to keep following them and see what their concerns are now and how their lives have changed."
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Koenig pointed to the fast nature of the Internet as a reason for the three-year gap between the new effort and their last record, Contra. "Something new comes out and there's a frenzy and then you see how quickly it can all disappear," he said. "You can have a year or two based on being of the moment but beyond that, you're only as good as your songs."
The time off between discs was essential, he added. "If someone had put a gun to our heads a year ago, we could have handed something in and it wouldn't have sucked," said Koenig. "But if we listen back to our own work and it doesn't sound the way we wanted, the depression that sets in is really extreme. So releasing a record that we didn't feel 100 percent about would commit us to a year of depression, touring a half-assed record."
