They were initially dismissed as the acme of upper-class preppiness, but the band’s new album Only God Was Above Us is its grittiest yet. Has their frontman finally exorcised past demons?
On its surface, Only God Was Above Us, the fifth album from Vampire Weekend, has a darkly fatalist point of view. Over some of the band’s loudest, grittiest production to date, frontman and songwriter Ezra Koenig sings of curses, missed connections and imagined wars, airing plangent anxieties about how this tumultuous era of history will be remembered. It plays a little like a knottier sequel to the band’s anxious 2013 record Modern Vampires of the City – but Koenig himself hopes the album leaves listeners with some level of hope.
“I think fatalism taken to its extreme is optimism – some of the happiest people in the world have some element of surrender and acceptance,” he says. “There’s fatalism – the world is a chaotic place and isn’t that terrible? And then there’s optimism – the world is a chaotic place, and you gotta surf that wave.”
