Vampire Weekend’s recordings have often been characterised by a type of tidiness, a clear fusion of Ezra Koenig’s pop songwriting smarts and the group’s instrumental financial system. The band’s new album Solely God Was Above Us presents one thing completely different, pivoting away from the brighter, jammier elements of 2019’s Father of the Bride with a determined bent towards experimentation and shocking, typically harsh, new textures. The outcomes showcase a band that, almost 20 years in, is keen to problem a problem to its followers and produce a soundtrack for a actuality that’s teeming with noise and discord.
Opening music “Ice Cream Piano” broadcasts itself with lo-fi buzz after which repeatedly shifts in tempo earlier than winding out its closing vamp as one of many noisiest issues they’ve ever produced. The one “Classical” has a rave-style breakbeat and distorted curlicues of electrical guitar, however nonetheless manages to convey a sense of lushness with some alternating atonal/fairly stabs of piano and free-jazz saxophone. “Mary Boone,” a nod to the famed New York gallery proprietor, lifts the drum loop from Soul II Soul’s “Again to Life (Nonetheless Do You Need Me)” however provides in a towering choral association to bolster the rhythm and melody.
Koenig’s eager sense of music construction stays a fixture, anchoring these compositions from drifting too far off into weirdness. The languid groove of “Capricorn” comes bathed in reverb and takes a dub-like strategy to mixing, as instrumental accompaniment drops out and in with out warning, however Koenig’s major-key refrain is as immediately hummable as it’s empathetic. “Too previous for dying younger, to younger to dwell alone/Sifting by means of centuries for moments of your personal,” he sings. Likewise, “Join” options dizzying piano arpeggios that smear collectively and hard-panned instrumental solos that dance out and in of the combination, nevertheless it faithfully returns to its surprisingly hooky, extra reserved refrain.
As ever, Koenig’s lyrics are dense with allusions — obscure bits of New York historical past, family in international lands, and sandhogs working in underground tunnels. However there’s additionally a way of reckoning with the previous and the current. “Classical” and “Ice Cream Piano” each reference how energy can normalize inhumanity or bestow unearned privilege on future generations. “We’re all of the sons of vampires who drank the previous world’s neck,” Koenig sings at one level.
Sometimes, as in “Pravda” and “Gen-X Cops,” these lyrics get subsumed beneath crashing partitions of noise, rendering them nearly unintelligible the place it’d’ve made sense to drag again. Different occasions, the manufacturing selections are sudden and jarring — horns that bleat out startling warnings in “The Surfer,” a heavy push of 1 too many faders in a pair different cases — in ways in which distract from what’s occurring lyrically, which is possibly a part of the purpose.
Ultimately, Solely God Was Above Us goes out with a way of cautious optimism. The ultimate observe “Hope” runs almost eight minutes — epic by Vampire Weekend requirements — and combines its beautiful descending piano melody with Koenig’s stock of injustices. “The enemy’s invincible, I hope you let it go,” he repeats at each flip. It’s a reminder that residing is often messy, and also you’ve bought to be taught to maintain going. With Solely God Was Above Us, Vampire Weekend have discovered the odd magnificence inside that mess.
