The new video for Vampire Weekend’s single “Sunflower” is an all-star collaboration featuring guitar virtuoso Steve Lacy and funnyman Jerry Seinfeld in front of the camera, actor-turned-auteur Jonah Hill in the director’s chair, and a pair of legendary Manhattan Jewish delicatessens in the background. Hip-hop/film icon Fab 5 Freddy also has a brief cameo in the video.
The video begins with split-screen footage of Lacy and Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig shuffling around both sides of the deli counter at Upper West Side market Zabar’s. Midway through the reel, the action switches to nearby Barney Greengrass, where Seinfeld is hanging out by himself. Koenig and Lacy take seats at separate tables in the back dining room as the camera swirls around the restaurant. The clip ends with one of the deli guys pitching a joke to Seinfeld at the counter, as the two musicians read newspapers in the background.
As some music writers have suggested, Vampire Weekend is perhaps going for a ’90s vibe with its new album, so it’s only fitting that the band recruit the biggest TV star of that decade and the director of a film called Mid90s for a video set in two institutions that have not changed one bit over the last 25 years. It is, however, somewhat surprising that Hill decided to film Seinfeld at Barney Greengrass instead of Zabar’s, where the comedian and his wife fell in love and which they continue to visit on the regular.
• Vampire Weekend - Sunflower ft. Steve Lacy (Official Video) [YouTube]
• The Seinfelds Fell In Love Over Bagels and Lox [E]
