Rostam reimagines American music

Introduction to Rostam

0:00Welcome to Switched On Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. I've been listening to Rostam's music since at least college. Back in 2006, he was a college student as well. He was at Columbia University, where he joined the band Vampire Weekend, one of the groups that defined the 2000s New York City indie scene. I feel like their music spoke to me as an aspirational musician, because there was so much joy and enthusiasm, and frankly, their music often

0:36reflected my own experience in their songs like Campus. I see you, you're walking across the campus, going to professor studying romances. How am I supposed to pretend? I never want to see you again. How am I supposed to pretend? I never want to see you again. Rostam produced three albums as a member of Vampire Weekend before leaving the band in 2016, and he went on to produce hit records for artists like Clairo and Haim that have just such a distinct

1:09Rostam sound. He also has his own project under his name, and a new album out today called American Stories about his experience as an American whose family is from Iran.

Recording Conversation

1:32We originally recorded this conversation back in March, not long after the U.S. had launched military operations into the country. And given that its sounds are equally Americana and Persian instrumentation, I just feel like American Stories is essential listening to help us understand what it means to be American today, especially in this moment of conflict. Here's my conversation with Rostam. Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard? But not the pipeline. That's bull spend. And marketers are calling it out in

2:08dashboard confessions. My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive-sounding metric I had. Impressions. Cut the bull spend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

Sponsored by Redfin

2:31This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking. Maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin. Saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream.

3:00I'm so thankful for getting together today. Thank you for joining me, Rasta. Yes, it's nice to be here. So you've come to us with this album, American Stories. That's right. I don't usually lead from a visual because A, this is a podcast and B, I like talking about music, but it's such a compelling visual. Upside down American flag. It's desaturated. We have your

3:32name and Persian, sort of gray background. Yes. What are you telling us?

Rostam's Identity

3:37I think for me, everyone in my immediate family, my brother, my mom and dad was not born in America and I was born in America. My mom was pregnant when my parents moved to America. And so arriving here in a womb of a non-citizen and then becoming a citizen when I was born, it's made me have a very specific relationship to what it means to be American. And it's something that I've thought about my whole life. And at the same time, I've also thought about what my identity

4:09as an Iranian means. And I've tried to sort of hold both identities. And I think on this record, I was really wanting to see if I could bring those identities together musically. And yeah, that was something that sort of inspired me in the creation of the record. And simultaneously in the past year, I felt like seeing someone like Zoran Mamdani get elected and seeing him sort of change the political landscape and change the idea of like who we could have as leaders in America.

4:45It was something I emotionally connected to. And what I really want to say with bringing the American flag into my project is I feel connected to the American project. I think that we all should feel invested in the American project, no matter what outside forces seem to be telling us that we should feel about the American project. And I think ultimately, I want to convey some optimism about it. And I want to do that with songs, with albums and art. That's really what I'm wanting to

5:19say. And the usage of the flag upside down, that's something that's shared between the right wing, the left wing, the Native American land back movement. It's these different groups that all have taken this upside down flag and used it to mean different things to them. So I guess what I'm wanting to say is that we should be invested as Americans, we should be invested in this project, the American project. And simultaneously, it's okay for us to want more from it. If I was using the flag right side up, I think that wouldn't necessarily be expressing that desire that it's okay to want

5:55more from it. And I think if I use the exact colors of the American flag, that also maybe wouldn't be expressing this desire to like, invest your personal self in the American project.

Song Like a Spark

6:09So you kick us off with Like a Spark. Yes. It's your lead single. Yes. I want to know more about what it's about. But at its core, it's a call for freedom. So simultaneously, as we're talking about these bigger, overarching themes, the songs that I tend

6:42to write are about personal relationships, interpersonal relationships. And I like the way that those songs and subjects intersect with the bigger picture. But I, at the same time, I do want to protect a little bit about the sort of interpersonal experiences that sort of defined what was the song about. Well, I guess I don't have to know the specific detail, but what is the,

7:12what is this feeling you're telling us about? Okay. For me, we live in a society where partnership, romantic partnership, it's so interlinked with possessing your partner. You want to possess your partner and you want your partner to possess you. And I think that there can be ways in that, in which that's healthy, but there's also ways that that's not healthy. And I think the inspiration for me was this desire, like a mutual desire to have like a relationship where you and your partner,

7:45you love each other. And part of that love is allowing that person to be their whole self and to feel free to be their whole self. And I think that that's something that I was like interested in, in trying to write about in a song. At the same time, I, yeah, I, it's about other things too. It's not just about that, but I like that, that my songs can be interpreted on a bunch of levels. And that's why I don't want to say that like, oh, this is what the song is about. And this is the

8:15only thing the song is about. Yeah. To me, the way those things intersect, like your intention and how something is received, like, that's cool. Like, it's cool that like you, you may think, you know, what your song is about. And then years later, you're like, oh, wait, I was actually writing about this. And like, maybe some stranger who heard the song understood what I was talking about better than I did at the time. You know, I thought I knew what I was saying, but I didn't. In addition to making the show, I also, I teach at NYU and at Berkeley College of Music.

8:46And the first song that I teach in my class is What Light by Will Go. Jeff Tweedy sings, and if the whole world's singing your songs and all of your paintings have been hung, just remember what was yours is everyone's from now on. Basically, once it's out there, it's not yours anymore. And no matter how you feel about it, there's the uncomfortable relationship

9:20of having to deal with. That's not what I meant to say, but that's how you hear it. It's a big part of it. Yeah. I want to ask about maybe some self-quotation or just like some things that you do. Okay, cool. I love there's this moment in Like a Spark where there's this lovely descending piano line. Yes. I know which one you're referring to. I know you do. It's your music. Of course you do. So that of course immediately took me to Haim's Summer Girl. I don't know if that's what you were

9:55thinking, but the Summer Girl off of one of my favorite albums of all time, Women in Music Part 3, which she produced, has this little sax line.

10:18That's interesting. I did write both of those lines. It is true. The Summer Girl one, if we're, you know, I'm guessing if you're really into music, you might know some of these terms. I'm going to throw out some terms, but the Summer Girl line, what I was proud of in that is that the sax part is mixolydian and the rest of the song is major. Oh, it is. So the sax part kind of rubs in a sense that uses that flat seven. This is why I was struggling to learn it earlier when I was

10:48singing it by ear and I was like, oh, that worked. No way. That's cool. Yeah. So, and this is like a thing. I feel like there's like U2 songs that do this too, where like maybe like the synth part is playing the flat seven. But like everything else is just one to four. Makes a little crunchy. Yeah, exactly. That's right. And that's totally true. And there's like a whole tradition of music where you're mixing. It's called modal mixture when you mix mixolydian over major or any modes together. That's just like a nice extra little tension. Exactly. Yeah. But in Like a Spark,

11:22it's just, it's major on major. Yeah, it's just major on major. You were thinking of another thing, were you? Because I said like, when I said, were you self-quoting, were you going somewhere else? I guess, yeah. I think there are certain kind of like, I would just describe them as sort of patterny lines that I like. Yeah. That turn me on. Those are the things that like make your voice. Yeah, sure. Exactly. The voice is the choice. That's something Mac DeMarco once said to me. And yeah, I think there's certain things that I choose to draw from. And like, I think on some

11:55level, you know, music is a lot about patterns and there's certain patterns that I love. They just spark joy for me. And yeah, I think those kind of like descending thirds is an example of that. And I actually didn't know that you were going to play Summer Girl. I didn't, I actually didn't think of Summer Girl as, as fitting into that, but it does, it's much slower, but it does. You're right that it does. And the Mixolydian part for me takes it out of that same world. So, but it is

12:26interesting. You're calling me on my shit. No, it's more like, I, I really like when, um, when I enter a musical world and I recognize it as your world, like it is why people want to work with you is that you have a voice and you have many voices, obviously, but you know, there are many of my favorite pop musicians where I know how they think about melody, regardless of words, like just the way they construct a melody. And I know exactly who it is. And that's gonna be very refreshing. Yes. And when you just, you're developing your own little language in the same way that

12:59I have my own weird speech behaviors that make me, me. Yes. But okay. If music is, we have a bunch of patterns that we like. One of the things I've hearing on this album is sort of breaking expectations of some patterns. Yeah. And I think we particularly hear that, uh, towards the end of, uh, like a spark.

13:32What a gorgeous musical moment. Thank you. What's going on. Okay. So the way that was constructed is I made a rough version of it using a sitar guitar. Yeah. And then I had my friend Amir Yarmoyi, who's he's in Julian Casablanca's band, The Voids. I worked with him extensively on this record. He's also an Iranian American and his knowledge of Persian music goes a little deeper than mine. Yeah. And so in this case, I asked him to sort of take

14:07my rough sketch of a solo and kind of run with it. So he played that solo on an acoustic saws, which is like this really long instrument that has microtones. It has microtonal frets. And then he also has this electric saws that he bought in Istanbul when he was on tour with the voids. And, uh, it kind of sounds like a Middle Eastern Stratocaster. It's like a little, it's like this little thing that, that you can just, he, when he plays it, like he, he moves

14:42pretty fast when he plays it and he, he can, he can really touch on these microtones where you, you know, you get these notes that they're not the black keys or the white keys on a piano. They're in between those notes. There is a connection to summer girl.

14:58I don't think there's anything microtonal. Not microtonal, but rather the idea of things rubbing against each other that we're like, Oh, these two things don't usually fit, but they are fitting in this really lovely way because in Western harmony and pop music, we're typically, we're using equal temperament. All the notes are equally apart. Exactly. They resonate in a very particular way that give us this beautiful language of chords, but then we're missing all the notes in between all the microtonal things that give us great amounts of expression. And sometimes combining those two was not easy. Well, yeah. So what's interesting, I think for, in Persian music, it's like, it's so much more

15:29about melody and a drone and the melody can exit our Western sense of tonality. So it can touch on different modes sharing this same drone and it can touch on different sort of microtonal inflections where you're in between those, those notes, the, the black and the, and the white keys.

16:06And yes, one thing for me on this record was I found myself really drawn to the rub of that microtonal stuff from Middle Eastern music and just like the most simple acoustic guitar chords. So I'm trying to like sort of marry these different traditions. For me, I also love the idea that anyone could listen to that and, and be into it no matter what their sort of like musical knowledge was. And that's something I'm interested in, in general, just like, it's like why I'm,

16:39I'm drawn to pop music because I think that there's a place for pretty out there stuff. Oh yeah. That everyone can like, you know? Absolutely. So I feel like that conversation between sort of like West and East, there's an amazing moment of exactly that on your next song, Back of a Truck.

Song Back of a Truck

16:58Yes. Which has the name of basically a country song. And we have this spectacular interplay, a sort of call and response between what I'm assuming is the Saz and the pedal seal guitar. It's like, yeah, it's a violin, but yes, it's also Amir playing. He, he, so he can do those microtonal notes. He can do them on a, a regular violin and he can do them on the Saz. And so, yes, some of it is violin and some of it is, is Saz. Wow.

17:44Thank you. I've never heard these, these sounds in conversation like that before. Yes. And yet when I did, I was like, well, this makes so much sense because it's musically beautiful and rewarding, but also, you know, the pedal steel is an instrument that has no frets. You play it with a slide. Yes. It can bend into places. And you play it with your legs too. You play it with your legs and your feet and your knees. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. With this bar and you're bending and finding these sort of in-between spaces. And so it turns

18:15out these languages actually work really well together. There you go. There's one of my theses here. And, and the pedal steel even has its origins in Hawaii, which is interesting. Like when you think about where are these things that we associate with America, where do they originate from? Like what is American music? What are the foundations of American music? Like the pedal steel is in some ways, like, it's like one of the most quintessential country Western instruments. It's Americana. And yet, just like

18:50you say, like so much of what makes pedal steel moving is that you are moving between notes slowly and you're really, you are actually touching on those microtonal moments. We also hear this nod to classic American rock and roll, right? So at the end there, we got like a rolling stone. We have both a reference to the rolling stones, like a rolling stone by Bob Dylan.

19:32Earlier, we have Don't Think Twice It's All Right. And you also have You Just Keep Me Hanging on by the Supremes. Well, Lou Reed. Oh, it's Lou Reed.

19:49Actually, interestingly, so that was a song where I was stuck on it for a while. And I did something that I've rarely done in my life, but it was very rewarding. I was out to lunch with my friend Tobias Jesso Jr., who's an amazing songwriter. He's put out a couple of solo records. He's written a bunch of songs with Adele, Niall Horan, Harry Styles, the list goes on. And I was like, hey, Tobias, I'm stuck on this song. Do you want to come by and see if you can help me get unstuck? And he did just that. He came over and one of the lines that he came up with was,

20:21you just keep me hanging on. Because I had the lyric, six words from a song you love. I was looking for a missing puzzle piece. Don't think twice it's all right. Six syllables. That's six words. And I think in the Dylan era, they wrote all right as two words. Oh, interesting. So that is six. And then you just keep me hanging on. So that's six. And that was Tobias's contribution. What I'm hearing is a sort of like breakup on the road song. We were traveling down I-94.

20:54We're moving past some kind of relationship in our life. And along the way, reading inspirational quotes on bumper stickers, one of them being, don't think twice, it's all right. Sometimes the words mean what you like. Yes. And I feel like we're now in this place of having a meta conversation, which is you are telling me that the words can mean whatever you want them to mean. And I'm trying to figure them out. Yeah. Well, you're making me feel smart right now. But yeah, but that's like why I like doing solo albums, because I like getting a little

21:25lost in the process. And I think when I work with other people as a producer, I feel like it's my job to really always be like helping get us closer to the end point. And when I make my records on my own, I feel like it's my job just to get lost a little bit and to like not know what I'm writing about necessarily, not know where I want a song to go in terms of meaning. Because I find that I'm able to say things that I really, really deeply feel

21:57when I'm a little bit disconnected from what my full intentions are. Okay. I want to understand this better as sort of the role, both as an artist and as a producer. So often in life, it's so much more difficult to turn inward and say, how am I feeling? Or be in conversation with myself. And I often find a lot easier to be here in conversation with you and sort of figure out, okay, what's going on for you? How can I help you? How can I support you? So if, say, you're going to produce with someone else, you've produced many of my favorite records, whether with Vampire Weekend, Claro.

22:27Thank you so much. With Haim. If you're going to sit down, you're going to produce my album. Where does it begin? There's no one way that albums are written, recorded. And that's, that is another thing I love about it. I think we could do it if we tried. In the case of Claire, it was her first album. About half the songs we started from scratch in the studio and half the songs she recorded alone and brought to me and we finished the

22:59production together. It was like a pretty even split of like half and half between stuff that came from scratch and stuff that was really like her work as not just a songwriter, but also a producer. And then the final stage was us collaborating on the production together and making it all sound like one album. So that's like one example of a way it could happen. There's other records I've made where nine out of 10 songs, we started from scratch in the studio. The record that I made with Hamilton Lighthouser was like that. It was just

23:30kind of like us being in a studio together and stuff coming out of that or me making a track and playing it for him and just being like, Hamilton, I hear you on this. And it would be, there'd be some trial and error sometimes. Sometimes it would work. Sometimes it wouldn't. I had a dream that you were mine. I've had that dream a thousand times.

Creative Process

23:56Okay. So the process is obviously different every time. Are there certain conversations that you feel like you need to have and just like setting the boundaries of that relationship, especially if maybe if it's like a new person, you're getting to know them. Because you're being, you're being trusted to do this giant task of conducting this, this movement of this, this work. So with Hamilton Lighthouser throughout my twenties, the Walkman were one of my favorite bands. And it was always my dream to make a record with the Walkman and making a record with Hamilton was like the realization of that dream. And I knew, I knew I could probably play pretty much every Walkman song

24:28on guitar or piano. And then we had a couple of songs that we made for his first solo record. So there was a little bit of a trial period of like getting to know each other musically and becoming friends. So there was a trial period with me and Hamilton of getting to know each other musically, becoming friends. With Claire, I remember the first time I heard her, someone talked about her at a party. They're like, oh, you got to check out Claro. And I was like, what is it? Like, oh, it's, it's bedroom pop. And I was like, what's that? I don't know what that is. And then I went home and I

25:00listened to it. And immediately when I heard her voice, I was like, there's something in her voice that just like gut wrenching. Like it reminds me of my childhood or it reminds me of a past life. It was just something, something about her voice. I just instantly felt this connection to. And then I went on Instagram and I started following her on Instagram. And I saw that like months prior, she had posted one of my solo songs. And we had this interesting connection where she'd been a fan of

25:31mine. I was becoming a fan of hers. It was almost just like this kind of natural thing. And we went out to dinner and after dinner, I was like, should we try to make a song? And we ended up making a song in four hours. And that is one of my favorite songs from Immunity. And that was the first time we ever met in person. Sometimes it's a slow process of getting to know each other. And sometimes it happens more quickly. How do you turn that back around for yourself? Music is always happening for me. I have

26:01a piano in my living room. I usually have like one guitar just floating around in the living room. And then upstairs at my studio, there's another piano and there's like other guitars. There's other instruments that when I am just sort of like sitting around. Do you have little teenage engineering pocket calculators everywhere just like making beats? No, no. You know, it's funny. Nowadays, when I make beats, they tend to be with organic instruments. That is kind of what I'm into. I think

26:32as I'm realizing like, oh, like I like I like instruments. I hear that. That's my but I also I do like the hip hop slash pop format of songwriting. So for me, if I make a beat, it could just be like a one four chord progression on acoustic guitar. And I'll just take that I'll put it on Dropbox and I'll listen to it in my car. I'll listen to it when I'm, you know, on vacation in Massachusetts or

27:03somewhere. And over time, I will kind of like, start coming up with melodies. What I really like is the sort of freedom to to figure out what the vocal does without having to play an instrument simultaneously and being able to just like respond to the music, just the way that a rapper gets in the booth and is responding to the feeling of the drums in the booth, feeling or listening to a beat coming off of speakers in a studio. You know, like I think that for me is the kind of like the format of

27:38songwriting that I really love, even though the end product sounds like organic, sounds like I like was sitting playing acoustic guitar and singing at the same time. And sometimes I have done that. And sometimes I've sat at a piano and done it, you know, traditional style, as you might say. Yeah, it's always a little bit different. So to answer your question, how do I do it for me? I think I try to sort of divorce the music making, the beat making, the track making from the writing of the

28:09vocal melody and lyrics. And and sometimes there'll be like a gap. There'll be like three years between making a track and just it's like living in my Dropbox. And I am like, there's something good there. You're gonna you're gonna write something one day over that. Or maybe you won't. And that's OK, too. I feel like this this question of the creative process comes up in the music a couple of times. The opening of the song, Forgive Us to Know. Yes. I've been working slowly and time can help a song. Because I said it's stupid, the words I'm working on.

28:44Drove up to New England, listening in the car. Rolled the window stand and had the wind across my arms. So this song starts very plainly, sort of talking about the creative process. The chords are good, still work on the lyrics. I broke one of my rules, which is like, I don't like songs like that are about like being on the road, like being in a band, being in a being on a tour bus, being that those kind of

29:16songs I feel like are are danger, very dangerous. So this is the closest that I could get is to write a song that touches on the songwriting process. And I was like saying to myself, like, Rosto, you're skating on thin ice. You're on a tightrope, you know, like you're getting dangerously close to the danger zone of songs about touring and rock life. Well, to take it from the highly unrelatable, what it's like to be a rock star, we go into the literary, if you will. This gorgeous chorus, which I believe is quoting another poem.

29:53Alexander Pope.

30:12Tell me about it. I'd grown up hearing that. It's an aphorism, you know, to err is human, to forgive is divine. Yeah. You, you, you erred in breaking one of your rules and you've forgiven yourself and you've put it into your song. No, no, no, no. It's like, no, because this song is about, it was about a situation that I felt like, like a lot of emotional energy went into like thinking about this situation, wanting it to be better and feeling like there was nothing I could do to make it better. And then also taking that and thinking about myself, like, are there things that I've held

30:46on to? This is one that feels like it can connect very, very closely to the title of the album as well. It's something that's very personal, but you're talking about one of the greatest challenges that I think collectively people are trying to deal with. How do we live in a place of conflict and try to find forgiveness when we are all guilty? No one is innocent. It definitely transcends just the personal, which I, it actually feels like it's working on the personal plane, but all of a sudden it like ascends to this other place. I think that's what I enjoy about that opening lyric eventually taking us to the literary. It's that, that,

31:19that gap between very plain and something very elevated. I love what you're saying. I mean, I feel like you, you, you're getting me more than I'm allowing myself to really understand myself. I think I need a little bit of that. Like I was saying, like, I need to be a little bit lost in it. I need to not know exactly where I'm trying to go. But yeah, I mean, I, I wrote these chords and I took them on a road trip to New England and I listened in the car and I, I spent a long time just like writing verses for this song. And I, I had this vision of like what the song was about and I didn't know how to really

31:54put it into words and it took me a long time. I keep seeing celebrities posts, me in the nineties versus now. Well, the person staring at me in the mirror is definitely not the same person that could pull off bootcut jeans. Time creeps up on us so slowly. You don't see it until suddenly you do. Same thing goes for your bills. A dollar here, an uptick there. It's a slow burn until one day you realize the price you're

32:26paying now is way higher than when you signed up. But at T-Mobile customers had the lowest wireless bills versus Verizon and AT&T over the past five years. And with T-Mobile on their experience plans, you get a five-year price guarantee. So you know exactly what your plan price will be for the next five years. So at least that's one thing that won't change over time. I can't guarantee you'll still look good with frosted tips, but T-Mobile can give you a clear guarantee on your wireless plan. Lower bills based on Harris X billing snapshots from Q321 to Q425 compared to average AT&T and

32:59Verizon bills. Comparison excludes discounts, credits, and optional charges. Price guarantee on talk text and data exclusions like taxes and fees apply. See T-Mobile.com. When you've got a one-track mind, you go where the cravings take you. Welcome to Racetrack. Breakfast that satisfies. Snacks that sing. Drinks that refresh. It's a stop that pulls you in. We don't blame you for having a one-track mind because once you stop at Racetrack, no other stop will do. Same time

33:30tomorrow? You know it. Racetrack. Whatever gets you going. It's baseball, but so much more. Go bananas for banana ball with ESPN on Disney+. The greatest show in sports is the phenomenon everyone's talking about. Catch the Savannah Bananas and other fan favorite teams all season long with select games streaming with ESPN on Disney+. Let's go! U.S. residents, 18 plus only. Select

34:01banana ball games available to all Disney plus subscribers. Terms apply.

Song Hardy

34:09You have another song about creativity. Not necessarily just about creativity, but where creativity comes up. The song Hardy. There's a line, maybe the greatest art is never completed. We only have to leave it knowing we tried. Maybe the greatest art is never completed. We only have to leave it knowing we tried. Well, I think the parallel there is like a relationship and a piece of art. And it's like you look back on a relationship that maybe it didn't work out. It wasn't forever. And sometimes

34:45you look back on a piece of art, like an album or a song, and you're like, I didn't get this quite right. I didn't. The mix isn't what it's supposed to be. Those aren't the right lyrics. The melody didn't do what you want. Like it wasn't all that it should have been. And then I think what I'm trying to say is like, well, so what? Sometimes a relationship doesn't work out, but in some ways it's like, it's still a beautiful piece of art. You know, sometimes a piece of art is not perfect, but it's still a beautiful piece of art. And I think that's what I'd like to carry

35:17into the future. There's a certain sense that in both of these songs, I feel like you're breaking the fourth wall a little bit. Interesting. Yeah. Cause, cause you're, you're not just making the art. You're also talking about the art, showing the art, making me question, wait, how do I feel about it? It's its own way of displaying a kind of vulnerability. I feel like I'm getting closer into your mind of feeling in process rather than with conclusions. Yes. I like that. I like that. I like that. No, I genuinely, I like that. And I, yeah,

35:50I want there to be a little bit of mystery about Ross Sims life. You know, if I give you everything, you know, you got to have something for you. Exactly. We all have to have something for us. Yeah. I mean, you're, you're reminding me of there's, I don't know if you're familiar with the final David Bowie album. It's called Black Star. I know it very well. It's one of my

36:25favorite albums of all time. Yes. Chris Shurtleff, who is one of our engineers who works on the show was on the engineering team on that album. Amazing. And Tom Elmhurst, who mixed that album, also mixed my album. And I also worked a couple nights at Electric Lady. I recorded some vocals very late at night alone at Electric Lady. And they were so kind that they, you know, they hosted me. They didn't ask me to pay. They let me use the studio. It was very kind of them, but they put me in Tom Elmhurst's old room. So it was like all these interesting connections. But yeah, the last song

36:56on Black Star, I Can't Give Everything Away. And that was also the last song on the last David Bowie album. It's like his final statement. And then he left the earth a few days after it was released or just before, I can't recall. Yeah. Within moments of the album release. Yeah. He knew he was going and he gave us only as much as he felt was right. Yeah. Your work also deals with mortality.

37:31Sure. You have this sort of pair of songs, The Road to Death. Okay. And Come Apart. I love that you love those songs. The Road to Death is the one we're all on. I need a friend to come with me tomorrow. You're haunting. Kind of like Join Me on the River Styx. Can you say more about it?

38:02After COVID, I think all of us, maybe our immune systems like took a little bit of a hit. I don't know if you felt this way, but I felt sometimes like I wasn't like bouncing back the way I used to. I was sick for three years afterwards. Yeah. And I remember talking about this with my partner at the time and saying, you know, I feel like my immune system, you know, maybe it's just getting older, but I feel like my immune system isn't working as well as it used to. And he was like, well, yeah, I mean, that's why you die. Eventually your immune system stops working

38:34all together. And it was something I had never thought about. And I thought about like, you have some friends that smoke cigarettes and some friends that drink. And so there's that lyric, some of us are dying slowly and some of us are dying faster. And because you also have friends that don't do any of that stuff. And, you know, some of those people live longer. Some of the people that do the self-destructive behavior live longer. It's never fair. It's never fair. But yeah, I guess I had these ideas on my mind. And then I also had this experience

39:08of meeting someone who told me that he believed in God and he believed in Jesus. And in my whole life, I've never heard someone say, I believe in Jesus. And it struck me as this important question I needed to ask myself. I said, do I believe in Jesus? And it put me down this road. And I tried to sort of answer, I try to give you my feeling about that in the song. Then going down that path started to make me think about my dad. So my dad's name is Mohammed.

39:54His family is not religious. And yet he carries this name. He carries the name of a prophet. But my dad is, he's not a believer. I remember I have a very vivid memory being seven years old and saying, dad, do you believe in God? And he was like, I'm probably either atheist or agnostic. And I was a seven-year-old. I was like, what do those words mean? That's a lot for a seven-year-old. But yeah, but my dad's very cool. He was very direct. And I appreciate that about him.

40:26And he's, you know, he's also had to live in America with this name Mohammed, which carries so much with it. And so like all these things were kind of like living in my mind on that song, The Road to Death. I mean, it does get very personal. The line that stuck with me on this album more than any is on the other song about mortality on Come Apart. I know that the world will come apart I hope that the pain is gonna stop

41:00I hope that the pain is gonna stop I know that line was very powerful to me. So what's happening in Come Apart?

41:35It was definitely... I was writing lyrics that reflect on the last couple years. I remember sitting down at the guitar and the chords and that chorus came together. The melody and the lyrics and the chords, they all came together. I know that the world will come apart. And I said to myself, Rostam, what are you saying? What are you... The world will come apart? Like, what are you...

42:07Are you saying it in a hopeful way? Are you saying it in a sad way? I'm not sure. Are you sure? See, this is the thing. This is why I like making these Rostam albums, because I need to get lost in it. Yeah. I'm not just pulling words out of the sky. Of course. But at the same time, I have to let the song live and breathe. And I don't want to say too much about exactly what it's about. You know, I want people to take away what they take away from it and go research into olive trees.

42:45And, you know, I don't know. I like that it might set you down on a path to learn more. I accept that challenge. I think that's inviting us as listeners into an act of creativity. That, like, when we're throwing music together or words together, or even what you described, like, being in a studio with big, bumping speakers, and you're just listening to the beat and you're letting it inspire you. Part of it, like, it's just the somatic and felt experience of being with that music.

43:17Yes. Sometimes we don't have to have exactly, well, but what did it mean? What does it mean intellectually? Yeah. I mean, I do. I need to keep a little bit of that close to the chest. That's fine. I need to keep a little bit of that close to the chest. But I think, yeah, I don't know. I think that if you know me, if you follow me on social media and stuff, and you have a sense of the things that I care about, I think that when I talk about, when I say one day the pain is going to stop, I think you have a sense of what I'm talking about.

43:51What is the pain? And maybe you don't. And I think I got to be a little bit okay with that, too. I want to end in an area of something maybe you are giving away a little bit more. Back in February, you put out the 20th anniversary final edition of your song Campus, one of the original Vampire Weekend songs, one of the songs that I first fell in love with Vampire Weekend.

Song Campus

44:15And you wrote it back in 2005 or 2006? Yes, it started and it started and wrote most of it in December of 2005. Okay. And so the original very of its mid-2000s indie Brooklyn scene, that sound. And underlying it was this sort of great string arrangement that you have put out into the world.

44:51I wake up, my shoulder's cold. I think to leave here before I go. I pull my shirt on, walk out the door. Drag my feet along the floor. I pull my shirt on, walk out the door. Drag my feet along the floor. And I see you, you cross and cross the campus. Past professors, past and other scientists. You've given 51% of the masters to a bunch of organizations. Yes.

45:21Palestine Legal, Chirala, Palestine Children's Relief Fund, and Sudanese American Physicians Association. Tell me about revisiting this work 20 years from the past and the desire to give part of it away. So I was a senior in college when I started writing the song. It predated the formation of Vampire Weekend. And originally it wasn't meant to be part of the band, but a few months later, the band, we became, you know, an entity that could play songs and we needed more songs to play.

45:57And so we tried playing that song and it worked and it became a part of the first album. And I think over time, because of things like TikTok, where people have done this trend of like showing off their college campus when they get to college and soundtracking it with that song. It's lived like many lives, but that original version, which is the strings version of the song, I always wanted to put it out, but it just felt like there wasn't quite like a right moment.

46:30And I had posted it on my MySpace page. This is an era where you could like, you know, post a song and not necessarily available for download, but it was sort of a work in progress. Some people took it down, some websites like reposted it. It sort of lived a life on the internet. There was like a YouTube video or two that had like 50,000 views over the years. And then I just, I wanted to put out a version of it that was as close as I could get to done as possible.

47:00And I also feel like what's been going on on college campuses, I hear, I've heard things from people who are like, oh, those kids, they don't know what they're talking about when they're protesting. I think there's a part of me that's like angry that like anyone would say that. Like there's an anger for me that, or it's a sadness that people would think that these kids on college campuses are on the wrong side of history. No, like the kids know what they're talking about. The kids are on the right side of history.

47:33And Columbia is a place. Where you graduated from. I did graduate from Columbia. And that is the campus that the song campus takes place on. And that has become, it's become part of, it's gotten ensnared in, in these larger geopolitical conflicts. And I guess what I wanted to say is kind of like, I think it's important to remember that young people are intelligent and young people have their own wisdom.

48:07And that's what I just wanted to put, put out into the world, put my support behind. And you do that as well with the final song on your album, The Weight. So that's an interesting thing. Yes, that's a connection, right? So that song takes place on college campuses in 2025. And what's it saying?

48:55Oh, yeah. What's it saying? Well, I think I wanted to sort of paint a little bit of a, like, just try to just tell the story of that moment. What inspired me with The Weight was to really try to think about how brave it was of these students to speak plainly about what's going on in the Middle East and to do so with conviction.

49:25And there's, I think there's, I think there's a lot of forces working against that plain way of addressing a difficult situation. You sing, because you know the truth, you've got courage on your side. Yeah. You feel the wind come down to you, because you know the truth, you've got courage on your side. I'd like to think it's helpful. You end the album with this very beautiful instrumental.

49:59You've got maybe some static radio, and then the saws comes back at the saws. Yeah, there's two, there's electric and acoustic saws, and they're kind of doing a little bit of interplay there. Is there mandolin, maybe? Yes, there's mandolin. Electronic drums, synthesizers.

50:32This feels like the synthesis of your identity. Interesting. In some ways. You know, this American story, the cover with American flag, your name in Persian. Yes. And these sounds merging together to close out the album. Yes. Wow. I didn't think about it like that quite. What were you thinking? I played, yeah, I played this song for my friend Chris Black, who hosts this podcast called How Long Gone. And he loves guitar music.

51:04And I think at the end of this song, he said, oh, that's some good picking on that. And for me, it's funny that his interpretation of it is very much through an American lens. And it's like he's thinking about it in relation to bluegrass music, which I guess because I'm using a mandolin, it's touching on that world a little bit. But, like, the stuff Amir is playing is a little bit, let's say it's far from bluegrass, you know, but it's still appealing to this, like, American love of, like, fast, finger-picked, stringed instruments.

51:40You know, that's some good picking. And I think for me, it was like a reminder, like, oh, yeah, you did the thing that you wanted to do, which is you put something out into the world that maybe anyone could love. They don't need to have a degree in ethnomusicology. I don't want to, I'm not trying to get those people. It'd be, it's wonderful to get those people, but I kind of want to get everybody. That's my goal. When you were making this album, the world was in a different place.

Evolution of Music

52:09The United States has gone to war with Iran. Yes. What has changed in listening to your music, this project that was about the sort of, that includes part of the fusion of your identities. How has it evolved for you in this moment? Yes. It's hard for me to comment on it because just things are changing from day to day, you know? Like, the situation seems to change from day to day where, you know, one moment you're, like, feeling this optimism.

52:39And I've never actually been able to go to Iran. I'd like to one day. I'd like to live in a world where that's possible. But I also, I'm scared of what things may transpire to arrive at that place. Right. I'm scared of what may need to happen for people to live freely in Iran. And I'm scared of what, I'm scared of what kind of freedoms we in America are losing, you know?

53:14And, yeah, at the same time, like I said in earlier moments in this podcast, I do want to convey some kind of hope, some kind of optimism. You know, like, the Rostam project, as a songwriter, as a producer, as an artist, I want that to be aligned with some kind of, like, optimism. Just like I think the American project, deep down, it is fundamentally optimistic, even though, you know, it was the land of the free when you had to be a straight white male to be free.

53:47But they still were calling themselves the land of the free. It was problematic. But there was something there that brought us here. And hopefully there's a future where we go further and we allow people to truly live free. I think that's a beautiful place to end it. Thank you. Thank you, Rostam. Appreciate it. Switched on Pop is produced by Rana Cruz, edited by Lissa Soap, engineered by Brandon McFarlane, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb, video by Nick Ripps.

54:19Our theme music is by Jossie Adams and Zach Tenario of ArcIris, a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture, which is part of New York Magazine. You can subscribe at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back again on Tuesday. We're going to be going country, y'all, going out to the middle of nowhere. Until then, thanks for listening.