Review: Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us

Only God Was Above Us succeeds by being more expansive than early Vampire Weekend and much more cohesive than Father of the Bride

 

Vampire Weekend’s fourth album Father of the Bride marked a turning point for the band when it was released in 2019. It was their first album without founding member and producer Rostam Batmanglij, and singer Ezra Koenig made it without the involvement of the band’s bassist Chris Baio or drummer Chris Tomson. Not only was it basically a Koenig solo project, it was musically all over the place, going between country, classic rock, flamenco, psychedelic rock, lounge, and electronic music over 18 sprawling tracks. With Vampire Weekend’s direction in question after the departure of a core member, the band – or more realistically, Koenig – approached the album with “let’s try a little of everything and see what sticks.”

In contrast, Vampire Weekends fifth album Only God Was Above Us marks the return of Baio and Thomson to the recording process, and sounds much more like the band’s first three albums.

If you’ve listened to Vampire Weekend since their self-titled debut, a lot of Only God Was Above Us is going to sound very familiar. Almost every track contains some snippet that echoes an older one. Galloping snares kick the opening track “Ice Cream Piano ” into gear, just as they did with “Mansard Roof” on their self-titled debut. If this weren’t enough of a similarity, “Connect” straight up samples a drum loop from “Mansard Roof” for a few seconds. Part of the melody of “Classical” can be found on the debut’s track “M79.” Album highlight “Prep-School Gangsters” has a guitar melody and drumming that brings Contra to mind. The piano notes on “Capricorn” have a very similar pattern to the harpsichord of “Step” from Modern Vampires of the City, and the lyric “too old for dyin’ young” is almost definitely a reference to that abum’s hit, “Diane Young.” Additionally, the surf rock of “Gen-X Cops” hides a chorus delivered with the same cadence as “Hudson” from Modern Vampires while its piano notes evoke that album’s closer “Young Lion.”

As fun as it is to play “this new song just sounds like an older song!,” I don’t want to sell Only God Was Above Us short. It’s more than a tribute album to the Vampire Weekend of 2008 – 2013, as beloved as that period is, and there’s just as much new material as there are callbacks. For starters, the flurry of piano notes on “Connect” occasionally warp in a way that reminds me of the musician Bibio, and there’s so much great piano and keyboard on this album you’ll wonder if Batmanglij snuck back in. However, his only contribution to the album is “The Surfer,” it’s most unusual track. Koenig said this song started as a demo with Batmanglij several years ago, and was originally a very upbeat track. Now, “The Surfer” is something of a laid-back trip-hop track full of synthesized strings, horn crescendos, and delicate piano notes.

Elsewhere, the shoegaze-tier distortion that ends “Ice Cream Piano” really comes out of nowhere, and reappears on the otherwise baroque “Capricorn” for a very nice contrast. There’s altogether a lot more noise and fuzz on the album than you’d expect, from the guitar on “Classical” to the cacophonous false stop on the album’s closer “Hope.” This aspect might turn off some fans used to a band where everything sounded crisp and coordinated, and it is a little surprising considering that Only God Was Above Us has the same producer (Ariel Rechtshaid) as their last two albums. Nevertheless, traits like this, alongside tracks like “The Surfer,” keep Only God Was Above Us from just being a “return to form.”

Vampire Weekend are also known for slipping in some very highbrow lyrics and references into each album, which are slightly fewer in number on Only God Was Above Us. “Ice Cream Piano has the uniquely geographical rhyme of “you talk of Serbians, whisper Kosovar Albanians/the boy’s Romanian, third generation Transylvanian.” Similarly worldly, the chorus of “Pravda” is “they always ask me about pravda, it’s just the Russian word for truth,” and later keep this theme by namedropping the balalaika, a Russian stringed instrument. Of course, the most cultured reference comes during “Mary Boone,” a track addressed to its titular New York art dealer who was convicted for tax fraud. Even though the album doesn’t cram as much bookish namedropping into its verses as Father of the Bride or Modern Vampires of the City, its lyrics are still pretty sharp, focusing on intergenerational conflict, questions of faith, and a whole lot of New York City.

The greatest success of Only God Was Above Us is that it is more expansive than the relatively simplistic pop of early Vampire Weekend, while being much more cohesive than Father of the Bride. Having more complexity (and way more noise) than early Vampire Weekend means the album probably won’t have a big commercial hit like “A-Punk” or “Holiday,” but they’ve been successful enough to be able to take risks like these. The album only proves they’re still going as strong as ever, and if you’ve been following Vampire Weekend around this long, you’re guaranteed to love Only God Was Above Us.

Rating: 8/10