Only God Was Above Us

Hope is the longest VW song ever at eight minutes, but it never meanders despite its repetition. Instead it points toward the restless creativity that the band have never lacked, and that Only God Was Above Us demonstrates all too clearly.

No apology necessary: “Only God Was Above Us” is an essential chapter in the band’s still-evolving sound and career.

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.

Only God Was Above Us isn't just a great album in its own right -- it's one that enriches the understanding of Vampire Weekend's entire history.

Only God Was Above Us is more than another Vampire Weekend album, it is an amalgamation of their storied career and experiences wrapped up in a fearless take on what their genre can become.

By comparison [to 2019's Father Of The Bride], Only God Was Above Us is off its meds - grimier, sonically and spiritually; more compressed, more stressed. Lyrically, conflict is everywhere and nothing is stable. .... It would all be so much showing-off if the narrative ache Koenig displays wasn't so palpable, and the craft wasn't so meticulous. These guys listen hard, sometimes applying different processing effects on each word, even syllable. [May 2024, p.33]

So, taking all the wide-eyed playfulness of their earlier work, and the confidence in creating a sonic tapestry of their latter, ‘Only God Was Above Us’ is both their most accomplished and most Vampire Weekend album yet.

Only God Was Above Us is about transformations. It represents the idea that even with growth and change, an artist—or just a human being in general—can preserve their core. It’s high-brow art in that way. But if you, like Koenig, can appreciate the art of a good walk, it would also just make for a great soundtrack to your next mindless stroll.

The band seem focused on a singular mission: to deliver a rich, imaginative work that demands our attention, one that pushes the expectations of listeners as well as themselves. The question is: do they succeed? The answer is a resounding, unequivocal yes: Only God Was Above Us feels in many ways the kind of album we always knew the band had in them to make.

Only God Was Above Us is also the most honest album Vampire Weekend have made, an encapsulation of what the band does best, melodic and abstruse in Koenig’s own masterful way.

‘Only God Is Above Us’ is an elegant summation of the band’s journey and strengths – of joy, sincerity and a feeling of believing in and offering calm amongst the chaos.

Vampire Weekend have lost the carefree immediacy of some of their best-loved work; there's nothing on Only God as viscerally addictive as "A-Punk" or "This Life," and there's a prog-like complexity to these performances that's geared more toward the head than the heart. But there's also just enough stripped-down beauty — like the balladic "Capricorn," or the swooning brass outro of "The Surfer" — that Only God Was Above Us remains emotional as well as academic.

After just a few listens, it cements itself as the best Vampire Weekend album to date and, much like the New York City to which much of this album is an ode to, there are layers and layers to this record which are a delight to unpack and discover.

Lyrically, then, it’s a record characterised by its pessimism, yet musically it’s among their most joyful.

It’s a record that sucks in all of the band’s best-known sounds and blows them out in a wild confetti blast of twisty-indie-anxious-punk-jazzy-joy.

Only God Was Above Us feels like a record made by a band once more comfortable in their skins. [May 2024, p.86]

Pivoting away from the brighter, jammier aspects of 2019’s Father of the Bride with a decided bent toward experimentation and surprising, often harsh, new textures. The results showcase a band that, nearly two decades in, is willing to issue a challenge to its fans and produce a soundtrack for a reality that is teeming with noise and discord.

The city has changed, and so have Vampire Weekend — but underneath the layers of grime, graffiti, and garbage, their eclectic spirit remains unbroken.

The record plays with sonic extremes throughout, but VW stay comfortably in the preppy yet philosophical space they dominate—with the usual voice of God omnipresent in the chaos that is this record’s alpha and omega.

To this extent Only God Was Above Us defines itself by a heady mix of retrospection and relinquishment to the future – a coming-of-age awareness writ large in previous phases of their career lent further prescience with the passing of each entry in their canon.