The first phrase we hear leave the lips of Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig on the band’s latest album, this year’s Only God Was Above Us, is “fuck the world.” That’s quite an opening salvo from an outfit best known for its preppy pedigree and sunny dispositions. But, as they say, we live in trying times. The resulting record is darker and more aggressive than anything the trio — bassist Chris Baio and drummer Chris Tomson remain the core with Koenig — has yet conjured.
Vampire Weekend has evolved in the years since their 2008 self-titled debut, an endlessly hooky and wry record that incorporates elements of punk, art pop, African music and, of course, Paul Simon. The follow-up, 2010’s Contra, refined the band’s sound further through songs so expertly formed that they made it seem almost too easy. By 2013’s stellar Modern Vampires of the City, the band added an unforeseen dose of emotional depth to their bag of tricks, each song crafted with such precision and sense of purpose that their conceptual intentions — namely the fact of growing older and wiser while also attempting to evolve musically — almost go unnoticed.
It took six years for Vampire Weekend’s fourth album, Father of the Bride, to surface in 2019. A lot had changed, most significantly the departure of a founding member, multi-instrumentalist/studio guru Rostam Batmanglij, leaving Koenig free to investigate new artistic avenues, no matter how messy and aesthetically disjointed the result might be. Only God Was Above Us splits the difference between the conceptual cohesion of Modern Vampires of the City and the sprawling nature of Father of the Bride, the work of a band continuing to search for meaning both musically and personally.
“When the band was starting, I was obsessed with getting Contra out in 2010,” Koenig said in an interview with The Guardian earlier this year about the inevitable slowdown of Vampire Weekend’s output. “I thought it was important that we released albums back to back. It was so rushed. There was a real feeling of, ‘This is a rare opportunity.’ To continue at that pace and with that level of agitation would send anybody to burnout. And then you get into these existential things: If all you’re doing is making music, what’s the music about?”
Vampire Weekend plays the ICON Festival Stage at Smale Park on Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. More info: bradymusiccenter.com.
This story is featured in CityBeat's Sept. 18 print edition.
