Rostam Keeps Doing The Work

Rostam Batmanglij is working on some Lucinda Williams covers. In April, he shared a teaser of his progress for now, including with pal and in-demand horn blower Henry Solomon laying down a baritone saxophone part over a shuffling beat. His fandom of the country-music legend is well documented — “hey siri, google why is Lucinda Williams’ music queer although she is not,” he tweeted in March — nevertheless on a recent Zoom call from Los Angeles, he can’t mention what these latest tracks will amount to, not yet.


“I have an idea that's a bit of a secret,” he says, standing before a bright wall of windows. “I have this idea to do something that in the last few months has become the common way that pop albums are released, which is…,” he trails off. “I don't wish to ruin the surprise, however it's this thing that the hugest people in pop are doing across the board, and I thought it could be fun attempt to model my release soon after this new regular, to use a term, of art.”


Looking casual in a black tank top, he ties it all with each other, kind of: “The Lucinda Williams covers may be involved — or might not directly be.”


What might be taken as blowing smoke from a more trollish, much less credentialed artist comes across as Rostam doing the work in real time and being cautious not to share up until the job is done. Case in point, he’s habitually working. On the dozen-plus albums the frequent collaborator has worked on as a performer or a studio mind (or both), he’s played piano, organ, bell piano, harpsichord, acoustic and electric guitar, banjo, synthesizer, bass, mandolin, light percussion, and whichever other strings or keys he can find. He doesn’t play the saxophone, hence the help. Nevertheless he is aware enough to trust his own ears.


“I have really strong advice about sax in songs,” he tells MTV News. His latest album as a solo artist, Changephobia (out today), is dripping with brassy sax solos, courtesy of Solomon. This won’t shock anyone who’s followed Rostam’s decade-long career from Vampire Weekend linchpin to in-demand pop producer for Carly Rae Jepsen and Frank Ocean, however Changephobia opts out of arena maximalism in favor of a lithe, airy mood. It’s a reflection of his own taste. “There are some songs where I think the sax is astonishing, and there really are other times Whenever I think it is corny terrible. And also you know what? I feel the same way about strings.”


Classical elements have long been fertile ground for the former music student. Early Vampire Weekend songs like “M79” and “Taxi Cab” sprang to three-dimensional life thanks to his string arrangements, and 2016’s I Had a Dream That You Were Mine with crooner Hamilton Leithauser noticed its strength in swooning chamber-pop moments. Although as his sensibilities evolved, Rostam likewise expanded his sonic toolkit. His moody nevertheless bright sound has earned him Grammy recognition for Haim’s Women in Music Pt. III, which he co-produced, and acclaim for Immunity, the debut from emerging vocalist Clairo that merged her lo-fi roots with Rostam’s own synth-pop experiments.


As a solo artist, he’s melded the classical influences that marked his early career with folk music and dreamy pop. That potent blend yielded a warm debut in 2017’s Half-Light, and any time as soon as he set out to create follow-up Changephobia, he sought a looser, jazzier sound. Cue the saxophone.


While referencing classical music has offered him “some secret language that you can speak with” over a 15-year career for now, Rostam is currently picking up brassier lingo. “I guess the reason that I wanted to create this record where the sax was like a character in the ensemble is because I do have strong suggestions about the way I want sax to sound on records and what kinds of things I want sax to reference.”


Therefore, Solomon’s saxophone feels like a second voice during Changephobia, a duetter who reappears to guide Rostam’s sedate rhythms, as on lead single “Unfold You,” or adding an ethereal gauze to moony closer “Starlight.” Solomon also lit up Haim’s “Summer Girl” with its mellow homage to Lou Reed in 2019. That song’s atmosphere — California breezy even in the face of adversity — characterizes much of Changephobia. As Rostam sings about climate change, miscommunication, and escape, he seeks out natural sounds, a tactical move aimed at making them easier to translate in a live setting without losing any of their polish. “It's this sort of insane thing of attempting to create a live efficiency that is big because the recording,” Rostam says. “I want [the songs] to be totally freewheeling, to have no computers involved, everything loose and just untamed, I guess, and unchained.”


Still, some of Changephobia’s crucial moments are devoid of wind entirely. Euphoric single “4Runner” rushes with forward propulsion, spinning a yarn of fizzy love in its amber guitar lines. “I was more interested in what I wanted to mention lyrically than how I wanted the melody to flow,” Rostam says. “From the Back of a Cab” identically feels like a sunset personified, thanks to a fashionable video with gentle cameos from Charli XCX, Haim, Wallows, and more. On “To Communicate,” one of its most cathartic tracks, Rostam sings a mouthful for a pop song — “You mentioned a discrepancy at the begin may account for a conflict between us” — that came to him totally formed while sitting at the piano.


“I find a lot of times the deepest songs that I write are If I turn my brain off and just let it to drive, or let this little character in the back of my brain to be in back of the wheel,” he says. “I've grown a lot in the last five years. I feel like I've become wiser, and yes it was somewhat hard-fought. It wasn't easy.”


This wisdom permits Changephobia to exist both as a vibe and as a statement ready for a close read. On a more casual listen, you’ll pick up subtle tempo changes and fun experiments, like the “drum-and-bass song that turns into a grunge song” called “Kinney” and the cool evening beat of “Bio18,” which makes it one of the prettiest songs he’s ever penned. With headphones in, meanwhile, Rostam’s words can knock the breath out of you. “I didn't hope to stumble on a question / That might furious the foundation of the world in which we lived in,” he confesses on the searching title track. To punctuate “Next Thing,” he keeps it simple: “Some pain is OK.”


“I think I'm the sort of songwriter who's group kind of afraid of writing a song that's just about one thing,” he says. It’s the sort of thought you’d expect from a true collaborator, one whose latest project shines in part because of a friend’s shining saxophone. He’s given Solomon his due by including his solos in the musical transcription that comes indoor within the album’s vinyl booklet. “I studied music in college, and even before that, I learned how to notate music any time While I was a really little kid. So to me, I think it's just cool. It's piece of the art,” he says. “You can read the lyrics, you could follow along to the lyrics, you could read the sax solos, and follow along to the sax solos.”


you could also learn how to play his big-throated folk song “In a River,” courtesy of a YouTube tutorial made by Rostam himself. It’s a three-minute mandolin strumming lesson that even dips into suspended chords without getting bogged down in clunky theory explanations. The whole clip breezes by, suggesting Rostam’s abilities lie in both demystifying the creation process and making people feel a little more connected to it. “Some people might be like, ‘Oh, that's so ridiculous, and dorky, and it's high-minded,’ or something,” he says. “But I don't feel that.” How could he? He’s just doing the work.