Vagabon — Vagabon (Oct. 18th, 2019)
Birth name: Lætitia Tamko
Born: October 25, 1994, Yaoundé, Cameroon
Location: New York, NY
Album release: October 18, 2019
Record Label: Nonesuch
Duration: 35:00
Tracks:
01 Full Moon In Gemini 2:52
02 Flood 3:44
03 Secret Medicine 2:56
04 Water Me Down 4:32
05 In A Bind 3:40
06 Wits About You 2:39
07 Please Don’t Leave The Table 3:41
08 Home Soon 4:50
09 Every Woman 3:27
10 Full Moon In Gemini (Monako Reprise) 3:26
Studio albums:
♣ Infinite Worlds (2017)
♣ Vagabon (2019)
EPs:
♣ Persian Garden (2014)
♣ Tamko tries out keyboards at a music shop in Brooklyn. Tamko describes Vagabon as a flex: she plays many of the instruments you hear on it, and she learned the digital audio software Logic Pro so she could produce it almost entirely on her own.
♣ Tamko’s parents eventually surprised her with an acoustic guitar when she was 17, just about to graduate. She remembers screaming when she found the instrument in the bathroom (still in its box from Costco) and then setting to work learning how to play it.
♣ “I’m constantly thinking about ‘no suffer porn, no suffer porn, no suffer porn ... that is not how I want to be talked about,” Tamko said.
♣ Tamko walks with Oliver Hill, a session player on keys, guitar and viola, in Brooklyn. Making Vagabon was painful because of how much pressure Tamko puts on herself; she says there was a whole period of time when she was so creatively paralyzed that she couldn’t open her computer to work on arranging songs. But it is also the record that documents the happiest era of her life.
♣ Tamko is not interested in being the so~called “Cameroonian girl in indie rock.” The question was never whether she was welcome in rock or any popular music genre, for that matter. “I’m African,” Tamko says. “Most of your music will date back to that place.”
♣ “I’m naturally soft spoken,” Lætitia Tamko says. “But when I sing, I’m not soft spoken.”
♣ Lætitia Tamko’s second album, the soon~to~be~released, self~titled Vagabon, is written from the perspective of someone who found not just the space to call home, but also a firm grip on her artistic identity.
Author: Kholood Eid for NPR
Website: https://vagabonvagabon.com/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/vagabonjour
Twitter: https://twitter.com/vagabonvagabon
Label: https://www.nonesuch.com/