Inspired in part by Zohran Mamdani’s NY mayorship, Rostam Batmanglij’s gorgeous new album fuses Americana with sounds of the Middle East. So why isn’t his mum happy?
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he first song Rostam Batmanglij ever learned to play on guitar was Chuck Berry’s Johnny B Goode, the quintessentially American rock’n’roll hit about being an American rock’n’roll star. “It doesn’t get more American than that,” he says, with a smile.
The 42-year-old superproducer (Frank Ocean, Charli xcx, Carly Rae Jepsen) and former Vampire Weekend member is sitting across from me in a coworking cafe in London, trying to explain the fixation he’s always had with US culture. “My brother was born in France, my parents were born in Iran,” he says. “But I was in my mum’s womb when I first came to America. My position is different. So what is my relationship to the American flag? What is my relationship to American citizenship?”
Those questions come to the fore on American Stories, Batmanglij’s third solo album and best to date. Its gorgeous, linen-y pop songs split the difference between Astral Weeks and Andy Shauf, as Batmanglij sings about love, songwriting and, on the album’s most resonant tracks, the fast-unspooling political landscape. As he was making it, he found himself drawn equally to Persian music and Americana, endeavouring to unify the two. “A good challenge,” he says. It sounds quintessentially American (pedal steel) and Middle Eastern (Amir Yaghmai, a member of the Voidz, plays the lute-like Turkish saz throughout).
