Ezra Koenig begins Only God was above us speaking, it seems, to one person only. Against a dull amp hum and a tentative guitar strum, it sounds thin and reedy, almost satanic, a little doomy. “Fuck the world,” Koenig sings softly, “You said it quietly/No one could hear you/No one but me.”
That hushed distortion opens Vampire Weekend's fifth album, where Koenig and bandmates Chrises Baio and Tomson look longingly to the past to find more questions than answers. A major concern is the story, and where to fit within it, but ultimately, Vampire Weekend itself is the focus of Only God was above us. It's the band's most overtly self-referential release, a collage of signature sounds and patterns interspersed with allusions. It feels young and comfortable, regularly elegant and charming, calm and comforting and, at times, foreboding. And just a little anxious.
This means that Only God was above us it's also the most honest album Vampire Weekend have made, a succinct presentation of what the band does best, melodic and sharp in Koenig's own masterful way. Take the two obvious callbacks on “Connect,” which recreates Tomson's “Mansard Roof” drum and fits reminiscent keyboards On the contraryThe dramatic success of “Holiday”. The song is a vivid reverie about lost days in New York, but slightly skewed in its memories and mood. Koenig and co-producer Ariel Rechtshaid capture the strange situation with a track that takes the sounds of Vampire Weekend and twists them into a slightly jazzy, sometimes slightly electronic, one beat away from completely melting down. The result is something like indie deja vu, a sense that we've heard this before but can't quite place it.
Although the band members themselves have long lived in Los Angeles, New York still looms large for Vampire Weekend. Koenig, Baio and Tomson grew up in or around the city and, with former partner but current collaborator Rostam Batmanglij, joined Columbia University. Being away from New York, however, offers a new perspective: From a distance, the city appears as a decaying giant, inescapably committed to its past and all the ghosts that have passed through. By simply naming New Yorkers of old—the late Russian-born journalists Henry and Ludmilla Nikitina Shapiro, their daughter, Irina Shapiro Corten, the famous gallerist Mary Boone, even a defunct tie store—he observes Koenig's ever-vibrant world of names. the strangeness of living in vast shadows.
