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Vampire Weekend’s fifth album, Only God Was Above Us, presents a somber outlook on life. The lyrics, written by frontman Ezra Koenig, touch on topics such as curses, lost opportunities, and hypothetical wars. The band’s signature upbeat sound is amplified by intense production, creating a sense of urgency. This follow-up to 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City carries a similar anxious tone, but Koenig intends for the album to ultimately leave listeners with a glimmer of hope.
The speaker suggests that extreme fatalism can actually lead to optimism. He believes that some of the happiest individuals have a sense of surrender and acceptance. While some may view the chaotic nature of the world as negative, others see it as an opportunity to embrace and ride the wave.
The line of thinking is typical Koenig: carefully equivocal and wryly flippant at the same time, delivered earnestly and thoughtfully. It’s a tightrope walk that’s spilled into Only God Was Above Us, which dips back into the genteel trappings of early Vampire Weekend records – richly orchestrated with lush, ambling upright bass, dizzying sax solos and cascading piano lines – but manages to sound vastly different to anything the band have done before.
This album has a tense and almost aggressive vibe. Koenig acknowledges that it has a darker aesthetic and is tonally more aggressive than any other record they’ve made. However, he doesn’t view it as a heavier record compared to their previous album, Father of the Bride, which had a shaggy, maximalist sound. He believes that if you were to swap the album covers, people would perceive them differently. He also acknowledges that people may categorize the albums using a binary system.
Koenig and I will be meeting in February, just a few days prior to the highly anticipated release of their new album. We will be meeting at a photo studio in central London where he appears to not have aged much since his promotion of Father of the Bride. However, his fashion sense has evolved along with the changing tones of his music. Instead of the previous vibrant fleeces worn with socks and sandals, he now opts for a khaki sweater and sand-colored slacks – possibly influenced by his upcoming 40th birthday.
As we age, our restless spirit is often influenced, though hopefully, by our experiences in life. In my younger years, I may have been arrogant, waiting for life to reveal its wonders. But eventually, I realized that each person has the ability to love and appreciate life. This realization was something that would have caused me to roll my eyes as a moody teenager or young adult struggling to find purpose.
In the beginning, his band received acclaim for transforming complex thoughts on life and death into catchy pop songs with high-quality production. Along with MGMT and Animal Collective, Vampire Weekend gained popularity in the mid-2000s as part of a new wave of indie bands. Their impressive talent for writing songs and Koenig’s own drive helped them quickly rise to the status of headliners at music festivals.
In the early days of the band, I was consumed with the goal of releasing our second album, Contra, in 2010. It felt crucial to put out albums in quick succession, but it was a rushed process. It felt like a unique opportunity but maintaining that pace and intensity would lead to burnout. This led to questioning the meaning of our music, if our sole focus was on creating it.
Over the past five years, Koenig of Vampire Weekend focused on his personal life after the release of their album, Father of the Bride. In 2018, he and his wife, Rashida Jones (an actor), welcomed a baby into their family. After completing a tour for the album, Koenig spent time living in cities like Tokyo and London, in addition to their main residence in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Jones worked on various film projects, allowing Koenig to take a break from the hectic album promotion. He did manage to work on some parts of Only God Was Above Us in these cities, although it was not for the purpose of recording in flashy locations.
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Although living in various locations may give the impression of a glamorous lifestyle, the reality is that when you’re relocating with your family, juggling work and school schedules, there is also a sense of isolation. According to him, this seemingly mundane period allowed for ideas to naturally emerge without external influences. He enjoys the simplicity of everyday tasks such as taking walks, reading alone, and driving his son to school in the morning. This has become his preferred way of living.
“Only God Was Above Us” marks Koenig’s first album since becoming a father. Has parenthood affected his approach to songwriting and career? Koenig responds with a hesitant smile, saying, “The short answer is no.” However, the album does have a sense of hopefulness, influenced by his sense of responsibility towards the next generation. “The future is uncertain, and young people have limited control over it,” he explains. “When people express shock at current world events, citing their children’s future, it makes you realize the importance of instilling a way of embracing life in them.”
Currently, in the United States, a necessary concept is to address the current state of divisive partisan politics. During both the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, Koenig was a strong supporter of Bernie Sanders and even performed at several of his rallies. As the 2020 election approached, he reflects, “it seemed like the right thing to do at the time, even though it may not have been likely to happen.” Is there a possibility that any of Sanders’s signature policies, such as universal healthcare, may resurface during this year’s election? While there is always hope for these initiatives, the practicality of their implementation remains uncertain.
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The speaker’s calm approach to discussing politics is reflected in the final track of his album, Hope. In this song, he discusses various political conspiracies and defeats before ending on a bittersweet note of acceptance. The line “Our enemy’s invincible / I hope you let it go” speaks to his optimistic outlook. He believes that politics is too focused on the end result, and we are all surrounded by people who become angry and frustrated when things don’t go as they want. The song Hope serves as a reminder to view hope as a personal feeling, rather than a demand for the world to change. As the speaker has gotten older, he has realized that there will always be disappointment when hoping for something specific, but hope itself is a much larger and meaningful concept.
Similarly, the latest album from Only God Was Above Us returns to their previous exploration of a baroque and distorted sound, as seen on Modern Vampires. This project also marks a reunion of lead singer Koenig with his bandmates Chris Baio and Chris Tomson, who accompanied the band during their Father of the Bride tour but did not participate in the album’s recording or appear in promotional materials. Multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij, who departed from the band after Modern Vampires, was involved in both Father of the Bride and the new album’s production, though he remains unaffiliated with the band. According to Koenig, the decision to bring back Tomson and Baio was not a deliberate one; Vampire Weekend has always been primarily a recording project and Father of the Bride was created with the mutual understanding that they would continue to collaborate and explore new musical directions.
In hindsight, Koenig is unsure if releasing Father of the Bride as a solo project was a wise decision. However, the record received a positive reception and resulted in our greatest tour. Koenig stands by his initial reasoning for the choice, feeling that as the band approached their fourth album, a photo of three men in their mid-30s may have made them seem less appealing.
Part of the reason may have been that he still felt emotionally scarred by the harsh critics of their early days. These critics accused the band of being privileged and out of touch, even though Koenig and Batmanglij, the band’s writers, came from working-class Jewish and Iranian backgrounds. This protective instinct led to the decision to present Father of the Bride as a solo project. With the end of an indie era, the departure of a band member, and the success of their previous album, there was a fear that this new album could be a disaster.
According to Koenig, the music scene that gave rise to Vampire Weekend no longer exists in the same way. Traditional methods of promoting a band, like indie blogs, have declined and fewer rock artists are topping the Billboard charts. Personally, Koenig no longer feels connected to modern indie music and he believes that the media is no longer seeking approval from established artists, as demonstrated when Vanity Fair asked Paul Simon for his thoughts on the band in 2011. Koenig is unsure of who the current equivalent of Vampire Weekend is, and it seems that no one else knows either. While he was aware of the context in which their previous album was made, he now only sees their new album within the scope of their own career.
The experience seems to be both freeing and unsettling for Koenig; in Only God Was Above Us, it produces a sound that is more complex and broad than anything the band has produced before, while still revisiting a style that they explored extensively on Modern Vampires. Koenig acknowledges the challenge of this context, but ultimately accepts the passage of time.
The date of release for Only God Was Above Us is April 5th.
Source: theguardian.com
