Shortly after announcing that he is no longer a member of Vampire Weekend, Rostam Batmanglij put out "Wood" and accompanied it with a lengthy annotation on Instagram. "It only took 4 and a half years," he wrote. (The song first appeared on SoundCloud back in 2011.) "I wanted to try to capture the feeling of being in bed with someone and dreaming something wild beside them."
The tune "started on an airplane. It was a beat I made with cut up tabla and digital sitar and me trying to push myself to write the hardest, fastest, most classical violin parts I could. I spent years trying to figure out what to sing on top of it — even recording real string players without a vocal part written —before realizing that everything would have to clear out before my voice could enter the picture."
He finished it eventually with help from Ariel Rechtshaid. "It's a love song," Batmanglij noted. "It's a queer love song. It's my moms' favorite thing I've ever done."
Listen below, and look for a 7" release soon.
