GutterPutter

Fatherhood, wisdom, ageing. Three interconnected ideas have become a recent anchor that makes the frontman of Vampire Weekend, Ezra Koenig, take a step back from his music’s past focus. The New York baroque pop band has long fought hard against how out-of-place their style and their background was compared to their contemporaries. Their upper-class background and elegant songwriting paved the way towards accusations of pretension and taking up space in one of the only areas where truly ordinary people could leave their mark. This clashing of identity and expectations have, in an interview with the Guardian, helped to influence the latest album’s brooding, existential, yet cautiously optimistic outlook based on Ezra’s comments. 

With a relatively biblical title of Only God Was Above Us, there was a clear link that ties the record to the band’s 2013 work in Modern Vampires of the City. In its own ways, the album itself has embraced the pains and tribulation of going past your young adult phase that follows up on the third record’s angst. For all the complaints about how Vampire Weekend are too privileged to be seen as indie, much of the mood there feels more authentic than pretentious. The key highlight in ‘Capricorn’ juxtaposes the baroqueness of the violin with the paralysis of your existence. The soaring guitars with a bit of noise, one that was found in ‘Prep-School Gangsters’ and ‘Gen-X Cops’ as well, are also integral to a lot of the appeal. In a way, it’s as if the record feels stuck  in the limbo between the rise of the indie label in the 1990s and the experimentations of now. 

Instead of being fancifully catchy in its lyricism, there was a more upfront attitude towards mortality. Right from the start in ‘Ice Cream Piano’, you are thrown into the existentialist attitude with the second-person intro: “Fuck the world, you said it quiet”. What was initially just a piano and a hi-hat had erupted into a wave of psychedelic guitar feedback and brute-force drumming like an affirmation to find the meaning of life. This instance of upbeat instrumentation adds the contrapuntal kind of dynamism in the songwriting; the kind that was found in the likes of ‘Connect’ with the scintillating pianos and jovial bassline or ‘Mary Boone’ from Koenig’s dream-like vocals from the production and the baggy percussion. This goes a long way in adding life to Only God Was Above Us, erecting it beyond the dullness of post-youth crisis. 

The album is among the most experimental for a good reason. Vampire Weekend aren’t all that interested in just sticking with the transparent chamber pop odes as they are bending its conventions to its fullest potential. If the classic saying of “Making it new” from Ezra Pound has a case study to prove its relevance, then look no further than the stereo-styled echoes of ‘The Surfer’ that beckons the continuation of life as you feel that you have hit rock bottom. If that might fail to impress, then the ringing glissando of the slide guitar on ‘Classical’ is a great subversion of what should on paper be the most conventional track. There is no telling what little flips you could expect out of the record and Koenig, bassist Chris Baio, and drummer Chris Tomson will keep you guessing as to what nuances are worth expecting. You know that there are compliments to be mined when the biggest left-turn of this album is ‘Pravda’ which feels like a complete polish of what makes the band popular: their African polyrhythmic tempo, literate anecdotes that point towards an outside world like Russia, and a hook that brought your attention.

Hidden underneath all of the glimmers and glamour that makes up Only God Was Above Us is ‘Hope’, a near 8-minute epic that feels as if it’s the most conscious out of the band’s discography. Over the militant drumming and disciplined bass, the lyrics turned its attention implicitly towards the failures of the United States on a social and political scale. From the disastrous wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan to conspiracy theories surrounding the end of the world, it feels like a piece of irony to undermine the optimistic title. Yet, the song itself doesn’t ask us to drown in the chaos that plagued the country. Instead, it calls for amendment and acceptance that such is the way of life. “My enemy’s invincible / I had to let it go” is the line Koenig turns to as if to show that to enjoy life, we must accept first and foremost the chronic evils that we might not get rid of at least in our lifetime. There is hope to be potentially found even if it demands the end of our innocence.

Thus comes the end of Only God Was Above Us. It is definitely one of the more special records that fans of chamber pop could enjoy. It nails well in the head the emphasis of diversifying your sound while keeping in touch with the roots that have made your style special in the first place. While the theme has been explored before in Modern Vampires of the City and the band might not have beaten its labelling as not being truly ‘indie’, this album still does stand on its own legs. Fun as it is to diss the aristocrats, the three musicians do at least form a personal project that just so happened to represent the best that they can do. I recommend that you give this a go.

4.4/5