Vampire Weekend - Sunflower (feat. Steve Lacy)

by Creed Griffiths

Senior Editor

/ ROCK

October 4, 2019

Vampire Weekend team up with Steve Lacy for Sunflower, a track that's bound to make you smile.

With Vampire Weekend’s announcement that another round of touring for their fourth LP, Father of the Bride would commence in 2020, fans who missed out the first time have been presented with another opportunity to see the band live. This announcement came in early September in front of a sold-out Madison Square Garden crowd, where they were also joined by Steve Lacy of The Internet to perform “Sunflower” for the first time.

Father of the Bride signals a return to the mainstream for Vampire Weekend after a six-year gap since the last release in their discography, 2013’s brilliant: Modern Vampires of the City. The group make up for lost time however with a double album that features eighteen – yes eighteen tracks spread out across close to an hour of play time. Some of those perfectly created moments are necessity’s, while other tracks appear lacklustre, or altogether unnecessary. By this point, the band has enough kudos to survive a few tracks that appear off the pace, especially when the chasm of time between releases is taken into account. Front man Ezra Koenig and co. can be excused from throwing as much material as they can muster at the wall and seeing what sticks.

One of the most compelling and successful “sticks” of the whole record can be found in one of the deeper cuts. Sunflower, the first of two successive features from Steve Lacy from the band: The Internet, highlights the guest guitarist in his all his glory. Lacy lays the foundations of this particular track as he strums a cheerful and exuberant riff, whilst occasionally harmonising alongside Koenig. Lacy moulds so well to the sound of Vampire Weekend that if one wasn’t aware he was a feature, they would be excused for not noticing he was there at all. His simple guitar work manages to capture a sense of happiness and sing-song style joy as he jumps around the beat and creates a perfect soundtrack for any song even remotely related to sunflowers. This is the sound of nature, the sound of a beautifully colourful and eye-catching flower standing tall on a sunshine soaked morning, as it turns its head to the sun and smiles.

For those who weren’t lucky enough to see Sunflower performed in all its glory live at Madison Square Garden earlier this year, then all they can do is hope for a guest appearance along the way as the band prepares to tour the U.S. once more.

The image used in this post is a reproduction of the original album art work. This property is owned by Spring Snow, LLC. under exclusive license to Columbia Records, a Division of Sony Music Entertainment © 2019.