Vampire Weekend Share “2021” Covers By Goose & Sam Gendel
Early in 2019, Vampire Weekend released “2021” as one of two lead singles from their divisive (by which I mean quite obviously brilliant) double-album Father Of The Bride. The song is short and sweet — less than two minutes of Ezra Koenig singing over a gorgeous sample from Haruomi Hosono’s “Talking,” with quirky vocal punctuation from Jenny Lewis — and at the time, it was largely overshadowed by “Harmony Hall,” the more robust and anthemic of the two songs released that day. But “2021” still became a beloved contribution to the band’s catalog, and now that we’re actually in 2021, it’s popping off in a big way.
Earlier this month the 155 podcast curated a whopping 25 punk covers of “2021,” many of them even shorter than the original. Now Vampire Weekend themselves have gotten into the “2021” covers curation game, and they’ve pushed the song to the opposite extreme. A new VW EP titled 40:42 comprises two new interpretations of the track by LA jazz saxophonist Sam Gendel and jammy Connecticut rock band Goose, each 20:21 in length. Both covers are accompanied by visuals: Gendel’s features animation by the man himself, while Goose’s is joined by performance footage.
Watch both videos and/or stream the audio below.
40:42 is out now. Despite that Sony Music logo on the front, it’s a Vampire Weekend self-release. Far be it from me to boss my favorite musicians around, but I really hope Koenig and Ariel Rechtshaid have used this pandemic to get back in the lab sooner than expected.