The world’s best known former Ruggles inhabitants, Vampire Weekend, released their new album Contra yesterday. The album has received positive reviews so far, including  a shockingly high 8.6 from notoriously picky Pitchfork Media.  The band was recently interviewed for a Wall Street Journal music blog, Speakeasy. The band talked about books and wore cardigans.

VW also discussed their temporary move to California, and about Columbia’s reputation. Said frontman Ezra Koenig: “I feel like Columbia is a very different place than Princeton or Harvard, but to a lot of people writing about our band it might as well be George W. Bush at Yale in the ’60s. So it doesn’t always pay to be nuanced.”

Koenig even held forth on on Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: “I felt like the central theme was identity.” Uh huh…maybe he took Interpretation of Culture, too!