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Apr 05, 2024 Web Exclusive By Mariel Fechik

A day prior to the release of Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut album in January 2008, Pitchfork’s Nitsuh Abebe called it “already one of the most talked-about and divisive records of the year.” 2008 feels like relatively ancient history in the timeline of indie rock (and the general culture of music consumption), and from the vantage point of 2024, there is something charmingly funny about a group of recent Columbia grads launching their exuberant patchwork of baroque melodies, Afropop, and a delicately skewered fantasy of New England wealth into the maw of the Great Recession and living to tell the tale.

But at the time (when the balance of cultural capital still favored music bloggers), the band had to dodge incessant jabs from self-conscious hipsters and middle-aged defenders of Paul Simon’s apparent claim to African hand drums. Miraculously, the clever, idiosyncratic, and undeniably talented group managed to cement themselves as indie rock royalty within the year. In the years and albums since, they’ve expanded their palette of textures and influences—but even as they moved from relatively sparse instrumentation into the more lush, experimental soundscapes of former bandmate Rostam Batmanglij’s production, they’ve never sounded unlike themselves, or fallen prey to streaming era demands for more mainstream sounding hits.

After 2019’s Father of the Bride, a dense, jam band-adjacent solo effort from frontman Ezra Koenig after Batmanglij’s departure from the band in 2016, Only God Was Above Us feels in many ways like a homecoming. Only God is to New York City what Vampire Weekend was to Cape Cod, and it’s classically Vampire Weekend: clever, darkly funny, melancholy, exuberant. Lyrically, Koenig has always mined the richest narratives from ephemera, creating collages of odd details, niche cultural references, and erudite observations about people and the world.

Only God Was Above Us takes its title from a 1988 headline in the New York Daily News regarding an Aloha Airlines flight whose roof was torn off mid-flight—the newspaper can be seen flashing its bold headline like a warning on the album’s surreal cover image, taken by New York photographer Steven Siegel as part of his 1980s Subway Dream series. The band seem to have taken their cue from Siegel’s bizarre, nearly post-apocalyptic vision of New York in the late 20th century; Only God Was Above Us is grittier and more tangled than they’ve ever sounded.

Koenig digs into obscure NYC art histories and strange headlines, singing of violent dreams, war, existentialism, and lost time. “Fuck the world,” he croons on the first line of the almost-raucous album album opener “Ice Cream Piano.” But despite this apparent turn toward cynicism, a nearly 40-year-old Koenig sings with the same honeyed tone and joyful abandon as his 24-year-old self yelping over the thumping bassline of “A-Punk.”

On Only God Was Above Us, the melodies are stranger, the production crunchier; there are squawking saxophones and guitar lines that don’t slot neatly into a major chord, harsh drum sounds and loose, dirty basslines. But there are also sugary harpsichord interludes, wistful classical piano motifs, and incredibly danceable tempos. They offer clever interpolations of their own musical past that land like delightful Easter eggs for longtime fans: on album highlight “Connect,” Chris Tomson recycles a frenetically syncopated drum beat from their first ever single “Mansard Roof”; the angular opening guitar melody on “Classical” is like a funhouse mirror reflection of the chamber strings on “M79”; Batmanglij even contributed to the record, and his presence is strongly felt in many moments of production that feel like the natural progression from 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City.

It is at once an ambitious record and one that will sound like home to anyone who still associates Oxford commas with the band. It’s likely to bring in a new generation of fans, as well as perhaps pull some who’ve strayed back into their orbit. There’s something strangely comforting about a band who can create something so fresh well into their second decade, and who can also, after all these years, still make an ascending major scale sound so elegant. (www.vampireweekend.com)

Author rating: 9/10