Vampire Weekenders: rating each band member's extra-curriculars

Four band members. Four categories. But, alas, there can be only one winner here. Three, two, one, GO!

1 Work Rate

Ezra Koenig
Prodigious, especially given he has also found time to date Quincy Jones’ daughter, Rashida. 4

Rostam Batmanglij
One solo album, an album with his band Discovery plus his neverending songwriting outreach work within the pop and rap communities. 5

Chris Tomson
The weakest solo work rate of all the people called Chris in Vampire Weekend, Tomson has written only one solo album so far, under his Dams Of The West moniker, 2016’s Youngish Americans. 2

Chris Baio
Two solo albums, in 2015 and 2017. 3

2 Hip Archness Of Titles

Ezra Koenig
A fourth Vampire Weekend album is due next year, working title: Mitsubishi Machiato. His hipster Anime TV show, Neo Yokio, is on Netflix soon. 4

Rostam Batmanglij
Thatch Snow? Probably a good thing he left tbh. 5

Chris Tomson
That’d be: The Inerrancy Of You And Me – a reference to the theological concept of biblical infallibility. 5

Chris Baio
The title of his first solo album, The Names, was taken wholesale from a Don DeLillo novel. 3

3 Likelihood Lil Uzi Vert Returns Their Calls

Ezra Koenig
Had a writing credit on Lemonade for Hold Up, because of a tweet he wrote, which referenced a Yeah Yeah Yeah’s lyric. He workshopped the tweet out with Diplo, who then sold the concept on to Beyonce. 4

Rostam Batmanglij
Turned up with a co-writing credit and played guitar on stand-out Ivy for Frank Ocean’s album. He also had a hand in Kanye West’s Friends. And some Carly Rae Jepsen. Plus a spot of obligatory Solange work - the horny-handed toil of every indie band guy who ever thought TLC were pretty sweet. 5

Chris Tomson
Wrote a solo album under his Dams Of The West moniker about the anomie of settling down and getting a mortgage. 0

Chris Baio
Wears a white tux in his solo music videos, in which he uses cheap bluescreen to teleport himself to glam locales, like a self-aware Pitbull. -1

4 Probability They’ll Sack It Off By Album Three To Open A Cookery School In Washington State

Ezra Koenig
Cookery is probably a bit too rooted, but any polymath is easily distracted. The odds of sacking off his band for a joint concept album with David Byrne about the sex life of George Washington Carver are pretty much nailed-on. 3

Rostam Batmanglij
Far too earnest to give up on the music, man: “I can’t even begin to express the joy I get from writing songs… i hold it sacred. There is so much amazing music…” etc. 1

Chris Tomson
High. The whole thing feels like one of those viral confessional pieces in which a millennial complains about ‘never feeling truly adult’. The lore of the latter-day authenticity-seeker is that he has to return to crafting at some point, and cookery is second only to chair-making on that spiritual plane. 5

Chris Baio
If he shuffles off into anything it’s most likely to be his already-maturing sideline as a techno DJ. 3

Totals

Ezra Koenig: 15

Rostam Batmanglij: 16

Chris Tomson: 12

Chris Baio: 10

Rostam wins!

He’d probably mutter something about art “not being a competition, it simply is”, earning him a further bonus point, so: BIG WINNER!

Half-Light by Rostam is out now. Neo Yokio will be available on Netflix from 22 September