Vampire Weekend co-founder Rostam has shared the single “4Runner” and announced a new album, Changephobia, that is due out June 4 through his own Matsor Projects. Changephobia is his second solo album, following his 2017 debut, Half-Light.
The tune “4Runner” joins previously released tracks “These Kids We Knew” and “Unfold You,” whose video featured actress Hari Nef.
“This collection of songs is not celebrating a fear of change,” Rostam said in a statement. “Rather, it’s the opposite. It’s about who we are capable of becoming if we recognize these fears in ourselves and rise above them.”
According to a release, Changephobia was influenced by 1950s Bebop and Nineties Neo-Psych, and lyrical topics include global warming (“These Kids We Knew”), sex (“Unfold You”) and the American phenomenon of the road trip (“4Runner”).
Changephobia was written and produced by Rostam over the last three years during the same period of time he produced Clairo’s breakthrough Immunity and Haim’s 2020 Album of the Year Grammy-nominated Women in Music Pt. III.
Explaining the album’s title, Rostam relates that “A few years ago I met a stranger on a park bench, somehow I found myself opening up to him; revealing recent changes in my life that had altered its course, and he said, “Change is good. Go with it.
“I realized that I had never heard that sentiment expressed before. Transphobia, biphobia, homophobia — these words hold a weight of threat, and it occurred to me that the threats they bare — the fears they describe — are rooted in a fear of change: a fear of the unknown, of a future that is not yet familiar, one in which there is a change of traditions, definitions, and distributions of power.
“So gender, too, was on my mind while creating this album, as I came to find myself writing about love and connection but not wanting to place relationships in a gendered context.”
Check out “4Runner” below.
Changephobia is available for pre-order here. Check out the tracklisting below.
1. These Kids We Knew
2. From the Back of a Cab
3. Unfold You
4. 4Runner
5. Changephobia
6. Kinney
7. Bio18
8. [interlude]
9. To Communicate
10. Next Thing
11. StarlightAbout Rostam
One of the founding members of Vampire Weekend and producer of their first three albums, Rostam Batmanglij has had an astonishingly varied and intensely busy few years, which has seen him take on everything from producing albums for HAIM (2020’s Women in Music Pt III, nominated for Album of the Year at the forthcoming Grammy Awards) and Clairo (2019’s Immunity), to composing for film and television, as well as collaborative work with the likes of Hamilton Leithauser, Lykke Li, Maggie Rogers and many others.
