2025 election of New York mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a>, a Muslim Indian democratic socialist, \u201cwas coinciding with me finding the laser focus of what I wanted the album to be about.\u201d Although he\u2019s now based in Los Angeles, Batmanglij majored in music at Columbia University \u2013 where he joined Vampire Weekend \u2013 and lived in NYC for many years. He posted emphatically in support of Mamdani\u2019s campaign. Few American political figures have inspired hate from the right quite like Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and is unapologetic about his left-wing politics. It made Batmanglij think about \u201cthe idea that there\u2019s an agenda to say what is and isn\u2019t American,\u201d he says. \u201cZohran\u2019s election is an expansion of what is part of American leadership. That was meaningful to me.\u201d<\/p>\nThe album was written and recorded before the US and Israel\u2019s war with Iran, and Rostam seems more focused on family history than broader Iranian\/American relations. But some songs on American Stories seem to reference obliquely Israel\u2019s bombardment of Gaza after the Hamas attacks: \u201cWhen they burned olive trees \/ They set fire to the leaves \/ But the roots are too strong \/ To let go of where they\u2019re from,\u201d Batmanglij sings on Come Apart. On The Weight, he seems to sing directly to students protesting about their university\u2019s ties to Israel, affirming that they\u2019ve \u201cgot courage on your side\u201d.<\/p>\n
Batmanglij, who is wearing a distinctive Artists4Ceasefire badge on his blazer, says the songs on American Stories \u201care a reflection of the last handful of years\u201d, but he won\u2019t be drawn on specific meanings. \u201cI like the idea that someone can approach them while not knowing what\u2019s been going on. There\u2019s a lot of people who don\u2019t. But I don\u2019t think an interview is the right place for them to find out. I want people to say, \u2018I love that song!\u2019 Then their best friend is like, \u2018Well, you know what it\u2019s about, right?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Going platinum \u2026 Rostam (second left) in Vampire Weekend in 2013. Photograph: Sarah Lee\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Batmanglij, who has worked extensively with gen Z artists including Clairo and Declan McKenna, believes \u201cyounger people have more clarity about what\u2019s going on in the world\u201d. By contrast, he adds: \u201cA lot of people in my generation and older have, I think, deluded themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been over a decade since Batmanglij left Vampire Weekend to pursue production and his own music full-time. He says he was always confident as a producer \u2013 a feeling bolstered by the fact that \u201cthe first Vampire Weekend record, the first album I produced, is platinum\u201d \u2013 but going solo has allowed him to pursue any weird idea to its natural conclusion. \u201cIt could be a bad idea. But I\u2019ll believe in it and want to keep believing in it,\u201d he says. \u201cThere is something fun about refusing to give up on an idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
One such idea was Hardy, a track featuring Clairo, whose debut album Immunity he produced. He made the beat for the track in 2012, but didn\u2019t know how to build it out until recently. \u201cI spent about two or three years just writing lyrics,\u201d he says, \u201cbefore I tried to record any vocals.\u201d The resulting song is about trying to write a song \u2013 a meta concept that is, he says, \u201ctreacherous terrain\u201d for any musician, but somehow it works.<\/p>\n
Such is the purview of American Stories: a lot of these sounds and ideas shouldn\u2019t work together, but absolutely do, thanks to Batmanglij\u2019s deft touch. I ask how his parents feel about him making an album partially inspired by their experience of migrating to America. \u201cMy mum was like, \u2018Why don\u2019t you sing in Persian?\u2019\u201d he says, grinning. \u201cShe\u2019ll never be happy!\u201d<\/p>\n
American Stories is released on 15 May on Matsor Projects<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first song Rostam Batmanglij ever learned to play on guitar was Chuck Berry\u2019s Johnny B Goode, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":936776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-936775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116515528368487882","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=936775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/936776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=936775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=936775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=936775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}