Vampire Weekend’s Rostam goes for pop bliss on the fussy, fantastic Half-Light

Rostam Batmanglij left Vampire Weekend last year, but he didn’t head for the beach to relax: The multi-instrumentalist, producer, and songwriter had already released some solo material, formed a duo with the singer of Ra Ra Riot called Discovery, collaborated with The Walkmen’s Hamilton Leithauser on an excellent album, and helped write and/or produce songs for big hitmakers like Carly Rae Jepsen, Charli XCX, and Frank Ocean. With Half-Light, Rostam—he’s not really using his last name professionally anymore—steps away from the anonymous comfort of band and collab-life for a solo album that crackles with fussy, fantastic energy. It’s close enough to the sound of his best-known band—with whom he still plans to work on occasion—to be familiar, but far enough to get a little weird, which is something he clearly enjoys doing.

Squint a little bit and a few of the songs on Half-Light could belong to Vampire Weekend, though it quickly becomes clear that Rostam’s production is unrestrained by the typical band structure here; he’s free to let the sounds run wherever they’d like to go. The album is front-loaded—almost regrettably so—with big songs like “Sumer,” which actually starts small but ends up with a huge chorus and a harpsichord jam. “Bike Dream” is a little more traditionally poppy, with a fantastic little singalong daydream: “Two boys / One to kiss your neck and one to bring you breakfast.” It’s the most deliberately hooky song on the record, and it’s a perfect late-summer single.