Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us: The cruel, with time, becomes classical.

Artist: Vampire Weekend
Album: Only God Was Above Us
Year: 2024
Grade: B+

In Brief: A new Vampire Weekend album usually turns out to be three things: A challenge, a delight, and a springboard for deep thoughts on topics music doesn’t usually prompt me to think about. Usually in that order, but sometimes all three at once. With its claustrophobic, quirky production, its brash collision of classical, jazz, worldbeat, and electronic influences, and various and sundry topics on Ezra Koenig’s mind, album #5 from the indie rock stalwarts is certainly no exception. It’s a strong entry in a respectably solid discography – but it’ll make you work for that realization.

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How long’s it been since we last heard from Vampire Weekend? On paper, this question isn’t hard to answer – it’s been five years since their fourth album, Father of the Bride, first lit up my speakers with its sunny springtime vibes. In terms of how my brain perceives time, it should feel like a long time ago. Usually when I talk about a band that last put out an album in 2018 or 2019, that feels like forever ago, thanks to the time-warp effect of Covid that made 2020 and parts of 2021 seem to drag on endlessly. But for some reason, thinking back to Father of the Bride makes it still feel very recent to me. Even though it’s a rather long record (especially by Vampire Weekend standards) and I have to be in a certain mood to listen to the whole thing from front to back, I feel like a lot of that record has been in the forefront of my memory over the past several years. Maybe it’s because I went back through the entire Vampire Weekend discography last year as I revised and added to my lists of favorite albums of the 2000s and the 2010s (all four of them so far are still worthy of those lists as far as I’m concerned), and doing a deeper dive on some of their influences from the 70s and 80s (Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, Talking Heads) certainly helped to keep them in the forefront of my memory as well. Usually by the time I’m three years out from an artist’s last album, I start to get antsy and wonder what they’re up to, and I poke around the internet every couple months for possible news of a new record. I did that a ton during the six-year gap between Father of the Bride and its predecessor, 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City. Yet it didn’t really occur to me to check in on them during most of the lead-up to Only God Was with Us. It kind of felt like they’d been with me that entire time, to the point when the first single from the new album finally came out, my first thought was “Wow, OK, guess it’s already time for a new album from these guys.” The way we humans perceive time is a weird thing, I’ll tell ya what.

Now, ask me when the last time we heard from Vampire Weekend as a full band was, and technically, I’d have to answer eleven years ago on Modern Vampires of the City, the last time they made an album with more than one member of the band fully on board. Keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist/sometimes producer Rostam Batmanglij had left the band on amicable terms in 2016, though I knew he had contributed a bit to Father of the Bride despite that. What I truly didn’t know at that point was that drummer Chris Tomson and bassist Chris Baio, the only other two full-time members of the band at that point aside from frontman Ezra Koenig, sat out the making of that record entirely. Not due to any animosity behind the scenes, as far as I can tell – Ezra had a vision, the other two guys trusted him to execute it, and they’d meet back up on stage to perform it all live (along with the host of auxiliary players that inevitably gets brought along on a Vampire Weekend tour, of course). I definitely clocked that something was different about that album, though not to the extent that I thought it was unworthy of bearing the Vampire Weekend name. In truth, though, it was really more of an Ezra Koenig/Ariel Rechtshaid collaboration, with the latter co-producing, mixing, and-or co-writing on several tracks. Rechtshaid had first produced for the band on Modern Vampires, and their working relationship is still going strong on Only God Was Above Us, actually expanding Rechtshaid’s role to that of a multi-instrumentalist who is credited for playing enough different things on this record that it would make Sufjan Stevens drool with envy. I don’t want to say he’s the new Rostam, because officially the band is still just a trio – but this record definitely wouldn’t be the same without their behind-the-scenes fourth ranger.

What’s abundantly apparent on Only God Was Above Us is that this definitely won’t be a further exploration of the more relaxed musical detour that Father of the Bride took. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a return to their old sound, though – it does put a lot of the Afrobeat-inspired drumming and the charmingly busy string arrangements right up front, but there’s something a bit more menacing behind it all this time around. At first glance, I regarded it as a slightly more chaotic take on Modern Vampires, a record that utterly baffled me from its very first notes, that probably gave me the hardest journey from “What the hell even is this?” to “I LOVE THIS!” out of any record in their catalogue so far. A little more of the record was up-tempo – which for me is always an agreeable thing – but the mixed seemed more deliberately cluttered, more angsty, more weighed down with grievances that Koenig and co. had to get off their chest. Bringing back their full-time drummer and bassist to play on the record seems to have given the band a renewed sense of vigor – Tomson is a unique and underrated drummer due to all the different styles he has to amalgamate to get the jumpy syncopation of a typical VW song, and I’m glad that both he and Baio are back in the saddle, even on some of the slower numbers where the strong rhythmic backbone turns out to make a bigger difference than the opening bars of a song might have led me to believe.

Some have described Only God Was Above Us as a more harsh and depressing one than their usual – not that their lyrics have ever really been a barrel of laughs if you really pay attention to them, but this time around there’s an extra sense of “The established social order is going to hell and we’ve got to blurt out some sort a warning about this before we get sucked into the fray!” The record draws its title from an exclamation made by a (presumably traumatized) survivor of a commercial flight that had its literal roof ripped off back in 1988, and as a statement on what the modern world is coming to, it definitely seems to be looking up at the leaders and laws and other social failsafes we once trusted in and go, “Wow, there’s not much there to keep us from getting sucked out into the void.” Not that there aren’t more buoyant, melodic hopeful moments here – I’d be so bold as to say there are even a few blissful ones. But wow, does Ezra’s songwriting get dense on this record, seeming to double down on the alliterative pop cultural and niche historical references that somehow all come together as a jumbled yet meaningful portrait of the precarious times we’re currently living in. Listening to him sing some of these tongue-twisters is a blast, but then he’ll have me rushing off to Google some term or some reference to a historical event that I won’t pretend to have any foreknowledge of for the sake of this review. It’s hard to be a smart band without coming across as smug, and I think the inventive and sometimes frenetic nature of this record really helps it to keep from ever feeling heavy-handed. I also think they pull of a need trick by paring the track listing down to just ten songs (as opposed to Father of the Bride‘s whopping eighteen!), bringing to mind the more succinct and playful days of the self-titled record and Contra, but then allowing a few of those songs elongated run times, maybe because they had a little more to say or because a particular vamp was fun to ruminate on for an extra minute or two. The end result is a record that is technically a few minutes longer than Modern Vampires, but that paradoxically sounds a little less bloated. I really can’t name a bad or even average song on this album – I certainly have my favorites, and those tend to fall on the more upbeat and hectic end of the spectrum, but there isn’t a lull like the string of mostly slower songs in Father of the Bride‘s second quarter, and there isn’t anything as off-puttingly weird as Modern Vampires‘ “Hudson”, either. Contra‘s still my all-time favorite, and I might still give Modern Vampires a slight edge in terms of its concentration of personal favorite songs, but that still puts Only God at a respectable third, which is a pretty good place to be in a discography that has set the bar pretty high from day one.

INDIVIDUAL TRACKS:

1. Ice Cream Piano
The album’s first track is… well, I’m just going to say it, it’s off-putting at first. Starting your record off with a dreary ballad in which the first thing you hear is a defeated “Fuck the world” is bound to be a polarizing move. Also throwing out the phrase “Fuck around and find out” with a bit of a wink and a nudge later on, it’s the only track that earns this album its “Explicit Lyrics” sticker, and I think it’s the first time they’ve gone R-rated with the lyrics since “Oxford Comma” and “Walcott” on their debut. The thing is, it’s startling and actually kind of fun to hear how suddenly this one bounces back and forth between slow and deflated, and manically up-tempo – once Chris Tomson’s drums take of galloping after the opening verse, the whole character of it changes, bringing in some bizarrely distorted guitars and eventually a section, sawing away with both fury and precision. Even when he gives off a vulgar first impression, Ezra Koenig is genuinely a thoughtful lyricist, pointing out that the hopeless attitude of the person he’s talking to really has more with them being used to – and perhaps even enjoying – the fight than wanting to go through the difficult work of actually resolving the underlying dispute. From wars between neighboring countries (Serbia, Kosovo, and Romania all get name-dropped in one of the verses, reminding us it wasn’t long ago that the Balkan peninsula was in total crisis) to otherwise “civilized” people using harsh words as weapons in personal wars they’d rather prolong than actually win, he seems to be setting the stage for an album that’s going to explore different facets of our collective thirst for conflict. Why is it called “Ice Cream Piano”? Well, aside from the fact that there’s a piano in the mix (sometimes used rather dissonantly), it leads to a pun in the otherwise cryptic chorus: “In dreams, I scream piano/I softly reach the high note/The world don’t recognize a singer who won’t sing.”
Grade: B

2. Classical
Now this one, I connected with right away – it’s got such a beguiling amalgamation of fun sounds that it was impossible to get through it without a smile on my face. A strong acoustic guitar strum kicks it off, and pretty soon there’s this wild, almost joyful, but highly distorted riff from what might be an electric guitar or else a keyboard – it does its fun little loop-de-loop in much the same way that a lot of the African-inspired melodic hooks did in their early days. There’s upright bass in here, for crying out loud, and it sounds freaking awesome, neatly slicing through the chaotic mix so that you can hear it loud and clear. A rather lively and improvisational-sounding sax solo comes in later, mixed in such a way that it’s deliberately abrasive within the context of this song discussing what’s considered traditional, orderly, “classical”. The lyrics find Ezra utterly dumbfounded at how the impact of wars and atrocities against basic human decency can become dulled with time, coming across to us in the history book as these heroic tales of warriors who came before us performing brave deeds for the good of our country when really, it’s just a case of history being written by the victors, with the real human impact shoved under the rug because we did it to those “other” people who are valued less in our version of the story. It’s a clever indictment, because the term “classical” immediately makes you think of pretty, frilly, bohemian creative types who have no cares in the world aside from studying the arts all day long, while the truth is that their privileged creature comforts are a direct results of entire civilizations they’ve been usurping for their own gain. Even the notion that the genre of music we call “classical” is more of a refined and civilized means of expression than “dirty” styles of music played by commoners (like jazz, as the song heavily implies, and also rock) seems to be questioned here, hinting at the deeply racist undertones of our musical classism, because one way of expressing ourselves musically came from Europe and the others originated in Africa. And here’s Vampire Weekend, frantically pulling all of these things together because they don’t want there to be an ugly clash over whose definition of “classical” wins the day.
Grade: A+

3. Capricorn
The pace slows down considerably on what I originally thought to be a bit of a sluggish tune about a person born in the dead of winter who resents their birthday being overlooked. The drums and bass seem to be rather straightforward at first, almost lackadaisical, and I really wasn’t giving the two Chrises credit where it was due for how inventive they ultimately are here – things get a lot busier in the chorus and that’s where this band’s rhythm section starts to shine again. There’s a bit of pretty piano in the verse that reminds me of something from an earlier record that had more of a laid-back pace and more of a “baroque” feel, like “Step” or “The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance”. But the distorted electronic bits when the song gets really busy are a whole other thing – they seem to take a few of the unconventional production choices from Modern Vampires a step further, aggressive in their determination to yank this song right out of “easy listening” territory. Overall, this song seems to be identifying with the weariness of a person who feels like they’re living in an age that wasn’t meant for them. Perhaps it’s your typical mid-life crisis sort of anxiety, or perhaps it’s just feeling out of step with how your own generation seems to view the world. As a dude in his 40s who sometimes feels like he’s got the physical energy of a much older person but who also relates to the stubborn idealism of people in their 20s who haven’t totally given into cynicism yet, I can relate.
Grade: A

4. Connect
The band delivers an absolute jaw-dropper here, spearheaded by some utterly amazing work from Ezra on the piano, who comes across sounding like a mix between a mad composer and one of those player pianos you’d find in an old saloon. There’s more upright bass (hell yeah!) and some delightfully speedy, syncopated drumming backing him up. This is quite an upbeat performance and yet it goes through phases, sometimes with the drums dropping out entirely or just playing a simple four-on-the-floor beat on the kick drum. It’s fun hearing everyone involved giving each other space to shine, and also going nuts on the most cluttered parts of the song when they’re all just wailing away at it together. The lyrics are of a much more personal nature here, seeming to tell the tale of a once free-spirited couple on a vacation together, trying to jump-start their romance, but thinking back to their early days (when they seem to have partaken in a lot of illicit substances together) and wondering if that spark that was kindled between them can ever be truly rekindled. One wonders if it’s the experiences – the places they went, the emotional and literal highs they shared – that they ended up falling in love with, rather than each other. Whatever the case, they can’t connect now, and Ezra’s character seems to be fumbling around clueless looking for a means of doing so, like a frazzled techie looking through an old box of wires for the right adapter to hook up some obsolete piece of machinery. This one goes through its twists and turns for just over five minutes – which is surprising for a song that spends a lot of its runtime at breakneck speed – and the ending is a sad one, with the couple apparently splitting up, her buying a house somewhere in the country, and him going over for the occasional quick visit, in which there’s rushed physical intimacy but they’ve given up hope of maintaining an actual relationship going forward.
Grade: A+

5. Prep-School Gangsters
The clash between “elite” and “commoner” classes explored on this album is perhaps never more striking than it is in the title of this song, which fuses together two very different identities that we tend to assume no two young people would pursue at the same time. Let’s be honest – when we think of prep school, we think of rich, mostly white, kids from rich backgrounds whose parents can afford to ship them off to expensive institutions that will supposedly mold them into upstanding leaders of tomorrow’s society, and when we think of gangsters, we think of… well, not that. This song juxtaposes the two by pointing out a sort of uneasy economic arrangement where the gangsters end up being a source of drugs for the stressed and over-pressured preppie kids, who agree to turn a blind eye to any other illegal activity they see because they’re now complicit. Or else they want to join up and live out some sort of warped fantasy. Something like that. The instrumentation here is another great example of how Vampire Weekend can start with something simple and toned down (such as Ezra’s fairly straightforward and somewhat muted guitar melody) and blossom into something much more complex. I love how elegantly he starts to color within the gaps between the simple notes he starts with, and when the frantic violin comes in, it’s one of my favorite moments on the album – it’s a lot of notes being played in rapid succession, which obviously takes talent and discipline to perform, but there’s also a bit of a shrill, squeaky quality to the sound of it, like it’s being played by a student who has all the moves down but hasn’t yet figured out how to play it with finesse. And that suits the song far better than if a “refined” virtuoso had played it “perfectly” and sanded all the edges off of it in the process. I love how the instrumentation on so many of these songs brilliantly captures the conflict happening in the lyrics.
Grade: A-

6. The Surfer
This is one of the album’s longer and more unusual songs, with its down-tempo drum-beat and its jazz-adjacent piano chords (which have kind of a ghostly reverb attached to them) initially putting it pretty far away from any sound I’d normally associate with Vampire Weekend. Thanks to the drum fills later on, which help to flesh out a rhythm that I didn’t realize at first was meant to be a bit syncopated, the song seems to slowly come to life, but it’s definitely one of the more downbeat and somber tracks on the record. I think less of going to the beach when I listen to this one, and more of driving aimlessly around a cold, impersonal metropolis on a chilly day (with the cinematic horn bursts that come in later reminding me of car horns honking at me because I’m heading the wrong way through a one-way tunnel). It’s just got that vaguely urban, after hours sort of feel to it. That might jive with the lyrics, which seem to be more about a transient bumming around New York City and looking for places to crash (and settling for an old mattress flumped down on the sidewalk outside a convenience store) and less about an actual surfer. I figure the term “California Kind” has a double meaning here – one, it refers to the size of the mattress, and two, it refers to a dream this person has that seems impossibly far away from ever being achieved. It’s a dark and sad look at what it’s like to live with your dream crushed, and maybe to be in denial about how bad it truly is, until the passage of time affords some hindsight. Not exactly the kind of thing I usually look for lyrically or instrumentally on a Vampire Weekend album, but this one actually started life quite a while back as an experimental Ezra and Rostam were writing together, so it kind of makes sense in the same context as a few of the weird outliers from Modern Vampires. Gotta hand it to Rostam – he left the band two albums ago and he’s still finding ways to get at least one songwriting credit on each new record.
Grade: B

7. Gen-X Cops
This track absolutely nails the uneasy blend of abrasive and elegant that seems to be a recurring aesthetic across the entire record. I love the immediacy of its electric guitar riff, blaring like an alarm, right at the beginning – it’s got kind of a weird filter on it, but still it’s one of the best “rock out” moments from a band who doesn’t necessarily have that as their M.O. most of the time. And if you listen carefully beneath the scuzzy rock instrumentation, you’ll hear the plucking of a harp, of all things. The lyrics describe harsh judgment later giving way to a gracious, humble apology as one young generation, convinced they’re the counter-cultural revolution who will change the world, grows up and becomes set in their ways, and then acts judgmental of the younger generation, lather, rinse, repeat. Ezra, being on the cusp of Generations X and Y (the latter also being known as the “Millennials”), has lived long enough to see a few iterations of this come to pass, and since he’s only a few years younger than me, once again I can relate. It seems like just yesterday the internet was being flooded with lazy memes about Millennials vs. Boomers, and now it’s Gen Z and even Alpha (who decided to start naming these generations with the third-to-last letter of the alphabet, anyway) who get the brunt of the jokes. This song kind of falls in line with “Capricorn” in terms of feeling like you’re out of step with your own generation (and the release of both songs as an A/B-side in advance of the album makes a lot more sense to me now) – if getting older means I have to become cantankerous and start playing culture police whenever the younger generations do things I don’t understand, then count me OUT.
Grade: A

8. Mary Boone
The classical elements come first in this lovely ballad, first the piano and later an angelic choir, with both eventually getting a chunky, late 80s/early 90s hip-hop sort of beat overlaid upon them. Once again, it’s a strange mixture for Vampire Weekend, and it took me a while to come around and embrace the beautifully weird way that these elements play off of each other. I love how ornate Ezra’s piano gets when this one really gets going. I was completely ignorant of who the actual person Mary Boone, who this song is obliquely addressed to, is in real life – she’s an art dealer and gallery owner who came up from humble beginnings as the daughter of immigrants in Pennsylvania, who moved to New York and became one of those storied examples of living the American dream… and who ended up serving some prison time for tax evasion in recent years. High class, petty crime, basically all the things this album is about rolled into one. The song seems to be addressing her at a low point in her life, possibly during her prison stint (“I’m on the dark side of your room”), coming across as mostly sympathetic, seeing echoes of her influence all across the city by way of all the contemporary artists whose work she championed. More generally, it’s a song about how the soul of a city changes as generations of hopeful new arrivals leave their mark on it, and there’s a sort of reverence to it, like he wants to honor those who paved the way for him, while also knowing when to step aside and make room for the voices that will eventually follow in his footsteps.
Grade: B+

9. Pravda
The reverb-heavy guitar arpeggios that loop throughout this mostly gentle song are yet another reminder that Koenig is an unconventional and underrated guitarist. Absolutely beautiful stuff – I’m getting “Harmony Hall” vibes here, though I can’t say the song expands to anywhere near that level of complexity. It’s not supposed to – it’s more of a humble narrative about a young man in America learning about his Russian heritage, learning to be proud of it even while he gets funny looks and uncomfortable questions from his peers, who assume based on their heritage that they’re commie sympathizers. “You always ask me about Pravda”, he comments in the chorus, seemingly referring to the Communist party propaganda magazine. “It’s just the Russian word for truth.” As usual, there’s a lot going on here and I couldn’t hope to parse through it all in a concise manner, but what strikes me the most here is how language carries unspoken implications that change over time. What could simply be a basic vocabulary word that a bilingual kid learned in grade school carries loads of dubious meaning to a foreigner who reacts to the mere use of an unfamiliar language with suspicion already. And Ezra’s character is basically washing his hands of it: “Your consciousness is not my problem.” It’s not his job to undo someone else’s prejudice, frustrating as it is that his entire family history is basically being reduced to playing the role of one-dimensional Hollywood bad guys.
Grade: B+

10. Hope
I’ve read some reviews suggesting that Only God Was Above Us is ultimately a rather depressing album, and I can see how part of that’s due to the departure from the sunnier sound of Father of the Bride and some of the more cluttered and abrasive production choices made here. But I also think this last track is a big part of it – a song called “Hope” that ironically, sounds a bit defeatist as it runs through stanza after stanza of reasons why our heroes have let us down, our beliefs have proven false, and our enemies remain unvanquished. This goes on for eight minutes, y’all – the longest track on a VW record this far, beating out “Diplomat’s Son” by nearly two minutes. It’s actually quite pretty, thanks to the lovely piano melody that runs throughout and a handful of acoustic instruments that might actually give it a rather bright sound if only the song were sped up a tad. (And of course there are a few noisier, messier moments where the distorted electric guitar once again makes itself known.) It’s the slow, repetitive rumination that makes it a bit of a gauntlet to get through. But I don’t actually think the point of this song is to make you feel hopeless. Ezra’s refrain of “I hope you let it go” seems genuine – like he actually holds onto hope that people clinging to their bitterness, their stubborn pride, their thirst for revenge, will find a way to let go of all of those toxic feelings. That’s not to say he expects people to just throw in the towel and give up whatever good fights they’re fighting against prejudice, inequality, human suffering, and so forth. It’s more the realization that there will always be an enemy of some sort, and if hate is your motivation, you’re eventually going to become as soulless as the people you’ve spent so long fighting against. That, of course, is my armchair interpretation of the closing song on an album where I’ve probably taken some wild swings in terms of understanding what’s really going on in most of the songs. Don’t take anything I’ve said here as definitive in terms of assigning meaning to Ezra’s words – I’m just trying to communicate how these songs all make me feel and what sort of thought processes they kick off in my mind. And I’ve found most of those feelings to be uplifting, even when the songs are confronting the worst of our human nature, and the thought processes to be worthwhile challenges to my status quo. At the end of the day, if an artist can give you those things, that’s time well spent.
Grade: B

WHAT’S IT WORTH TO ME?
Ice Cream Piano $1
Classical $2
Capricorn $1.50
Connect $2
Prep-School Gangsters $1.50
The Surfer $1
Gen-X Cops $1.75
Mary Boone $1.25
Pravda $1.25
Hope $1
TOTAL: $14.25

BAND MEMBERS:
Ezra Koenig: Lead vocals, electric and acoustic guitar, piano, organ, synth bass, synthesizer, keyboards
Chris Tomson: Drums, percussion, backing vocals
Chris Baio: Bass, backing vocals

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