Vampire Weekend - Only God Was Above Us

An album in which the first words uttered are ‘fuck the world’ might be a little unexpected coming from a band like Vampire Weekend, whose clean and happy pop sound has been their hallmark. Their new album ‘Only God Was Above Us’ marks an ambitious and pretty immense pendulum swing into new sonic territories, but it’s a swing which pays off in its masses.

The album is full of instrumental textures, with fuzzy, distorted feedback buzzing from the offset in ‘Ice Cream Piano’ - a track in which it sounds as if a rogue amp has been accidentally left on throughout and is as exciting and upbeat as it is chaotic and maximalist. This texture is a common thread throughout the album, lending itself to the nostalgic visions of New York City which inspired it and giving it a far more rough-around-the-edges sound than 2019’s ‘Father of the Bride’.

Random screeches, smashes, distortions and unexpected changes in tempo give an eeriness to the classic melodic Vampire Weekend-eque riffs we hear in ‘Capricorn’, ‘Classic’, and ‘Connect’, while ‘The Surfer’ has a slick sounding trip-hop beat in which the essence of the industrial city is beautifully captured. ‘Pravda’ and ‘Prep-School Gangsters’ are particularly lovely songs, being the two which harp back most to the band’s classic sound and entailing riffs radiating with warmth. The 8-minute orchestral odyssey of closer ‘Hope’, is also a huge highlight.

‘Only God Was Above Us’ is exciting. It’s unpredictable, and even a little jarring at times, but it serves to demonstrate the band’s ever-evolving sound; and is a thrilling peek into the musical terrain that they might venture into in the future.