A few days ahead of the release of her new album Sorry I Haven’t Called, singer-songwriter Laetitia Tamko, aka Vagabon, shared “Lexicon,” a Mariah Carey-inspired pop track about the sensation of dancing all night in a club. Sorry comes out this Friday via Nonesuch Records.
“Lexicon” and its fellow singles “Do Your Worst,” “Can I Talk My Shit?,” and “Carpenter” show a different side of Vagabon, whose self-titled album in 2019 was a soft, indie-electronica meditation. The artist herself in a press release describes this evolution as two-fold: one influence being producer Rostam (Vampire Weekend, HAIM, Clairo), and the other being the loss of her best friend in 2021. In grief, Vagabon surrounded herself with the pulsating energy of dance clubs, specifically in Germany, where she relocated to write this album. “The only things that were giving me access to a feeling were dance music and going to a rave in an extremely dark club where if I wanted to cry, I could do it and be around other people,” she says.
Rostam came into the picture back in LA. “He just got it,” says Vagabon of her vision for Sorry I Haven’t Called. “When I think of this album, I think of playfulness. It’s completely euphoric. It’s because things were dark that this record is so full of life and energy. It’s a reaction to what I was experiencing at the time, not a document of it.” The beauty of “Lexicon,” therefore, is that it’s not about mourning; it’s about nothing, really. “Our lexicon is gone / when we dance all night” Vagabon repeats above a pillow of rhythmic sounds, inviting the listener to let go of language, of the meaning of things.
Watch the music video for “Lexicon” below. Vagabon comes to Philly’s Underground Arts on October 27th; get your tickets via the XPN Concerts and Events page.