Vampire Weekend ‘Only God Was Above Us’ – Review

‘Only God Was Above Us’ is a meticulously planned deviation for Vampire Weekend. The album is the follow-up to 2019’s loose and live ‘Father of the Bride’, which was the group‘s first without founding member Rostam. It was charmingly wide eyed in all the right ways but In many senses, ‘Only God was above us’ can be read as a direct response to that record’s relative indulgence. Where ‘Father of the bride had a warm, jammy impulse, ‘Only God was above us’ feels cold and crunchy. It’s tightly focused and direct in contrast to ‘FOTB’s baggy vibes. It has a conscious post-modernity that is intriguing; because while the techniques they are adopting here are not new, they feel somewhat radical in the vampire weekend discography. Five albums in, and they’re still finding new things to say and new ways to say them.

The record is full of sharp and uncompromising juxtapositions. ‘Mary Boone’ is the pinnacle of this. It matches a sampled beat from R&B classic ‘Back to Life’ with a jazzy, upright bass-line, trilling piano notes, a choir and an interpolation of a Debussy melody. In any other hands it would feel messy or precociously audacious. Here, it pays off perfectly. Other singles ‘Capricorn’ and ‘Classical’ play similar tricks on us; turning our expectations inside out and upside down. ‘Capricorn’ starts off as a folky ballad but abruptly grinds the gears into one of their loudest and knottiest songs to date. ‘Classical’ does a similar thing in the final third when de-tuned horns start wailing over dissonant piano parts.

Vampire Weekend enjoy playing with contexts; rotating foregrounds and backgrounds so that strange little details suddenly become the central focus. So it is that ‘Connect’ feels like a creature intermittently morphing from one life form to the next. Is it contemporary Classical? Is that a Jungle Beat? In the final 30 seconds it’s definitely Free Jazz! But no, it’s just Vampire Weekend being Vampire Weekend.

Part of the excitement can be found in the sheer range of new ideas but there is also the sense that ‘Only God was above us’ is constantly engaged in a dialogue with previous Vampire Weekend songs. Lead single ‘Capricorn’ alludes to ‘Diane Young’ with its line about being ‘too old for dying young and too young to live alone.’ ‘Gen X Cops’ has a melody that echos ‘Hudson’ while ‘Connect’ knowingly samples a ‘Mansard Roof’ drum fill. Perhaps my two favourite tracks on the albums are the ones that most closely nod to the sound of Vampire Weekend’s debut. ‘Prep School Gangsters’ and ‘Pravda’ feature those bright, Afro-pop melodies, those springy rhythms, those trebly guitar tones that made Vampire Weeknd popular in the first place.

There is a sense in which the live spontaneity of the last record is countered by ‘Only God was Above Us’ carefully controlled studio production. Ezra Koenig has made a great deal about his love of warm, dry guitar tones but here he embraces dissonance. Feedback and distortion clip at the edges of songs like ‘Gen X Cops’ and ‘Pravada’, which, like the city that birthed the band, see grittiness as a part of the furniture. Even so, Ezra‘s songwriting and melodic sense are as sharp as ever and his arrangements can be as baroque as you might have expected (just listen to ‘The Surfer’). That’s the great thing about this album; it feels old and new all at once. Familiar and surprising. Quiet and loud. There is something on ‘Only God was Above Us’ for everyone. 

9/10