'Only God Was Above Us' by Vampire Weekend
'Only God Was Above Us' by Vampire Weekend
On its fifth album, Only God Was Above Us, Vampire Weekend continues to grow up without staggering under the heavier burdens of creative maturity. The skittish energy of its homonymous 2008 debut—the sound of four recent college graduates mingling indie rock, Afropop, and small-combo classical flourishes—is now calmer, if not settled.
Frontman Ezra Koenig isn’t the yelper he was; cracks of age bring him closer to the raspy reflections of a singer-songwriter like Josh Rouse. And, as an aging man is wont to do, he seeks familiar collaborators: Ariel Rechtshaid, a presence on 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City and 2019’s Father of the Bride, returns, as does former bandmate Rostam Batmanglij.
Rechtshaid co-produces all the tracks and co-writes a couple; he also contributes instrumental dexterity ranging from drum machine to glockenspiel. If Vampire Weekend’s music is an artisanal crazy quilt, then Rechtshaid is the tailor whose threads refine how the patches fit together.
Some patches, like the middle section of opener “Ice Cream Piano,” gallop along like postmodern ska (bassist Chris Tomson and drummer Chris Baio characteristically prevent the beat from slipping the reins), while others, like most of “Pravda,” combine East Coast folk-rock intelligence with sparkling guitar figures that Ali Farka Touré would recognize.
When a song threatens to get too straightforward, Koenig and the others spike the punch, as it were: Henry Solomon’s saxophones enter the shimmying grooves of “Classical” as if he’s channeling a particularly louche Stones ballad or Morphine’s Dana Colley, and “The Surfer” accesses the Clash’s warped-cassette experiments with dub and reggae.
The final song, “Hope,” is an eight-minute nursery rhyme akin to Bob Dylan’s Oh Mercy period, with simplicity and repetition foregrounded. Like the rest of Only God Was Above Us, it balances Vampire Weekend’s pop-hook urges against its indie-educated thoughtfulness.
Get Only God Was Above Us at Amazon here.
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