vampire weekend - only god was above us, out april 5, 2024

Which in essence FOTB was.

he was outright calling it a solo album in a recent interview

I appreciate the acknowledgment of that in their recent press, as at the time it wasn’t really talked about by EK at all. (I know I was kind of a jerk about it back then, but it just felt really weird.)

"This Life" is an all-time jam and easily one of their top five best.

agree

I thought I didn't really care about Vampire Weekend until "Harmony Hall," so we'll see how this one lands for me

Here we go

https://www.stereogum.com/2257327/vampire-weekend-only-god-was-above-us/reviews/premature-evaluation/

I’ll agree MVOTC is clunky but it also has “hannah hunt” which might be my favorite song in their catalogue.

"hannah hunt" is one of the few highlights on it yeah

BNM'd over at Pitchfork as well

like with mvotc what happened to their wonderful sense of rhythm on the first two albums? gone completely

I have never understood why Hannah Hunt is held in such high regard relative to the rest of their catalog. I loved the first three VW albums to death, played them constantly, and never connected with that song.

among other reasons, “hannah hunt” is extremely pretty and has the moment where ezra goes up an octave to sing the last chorus

understand where ufo is coming from about the rhythmic sameness of much of mvotc, but it definitely marked a lyrical and melodic level-up in my book, that made up for their transition into a somewhat more traditional rock outfit.

Cool cool -- no consensus as ever.

In the spirit of no consensus, I'll just throw out that I don't get the love for Contra at all. And I quite like the two surrounding albums

mvotc definitely not a melodic level up, first two albums are just jam-packed with hooks and the melodies on mvotc are not completely there - there's some good ones but also plenty that are lacking

another thing is that baio's high melodic basslines worked well very well with the styles of the first two albums but playing in the same way doesn't work anywhere near as well for mvotc's plodding chamber pop tunes and it just leaves the songs feeling empty at the bottom end

the new one really makes it obvious how fotb was a completely different band though, you can very much hear the rhythm section's distinct style is back, but it fits better here than on mvotc. i just wish koenig had written some tunes though

I can hum "Diane Young," "Worship You," "Everlasting Arms," "Unbelievers," especially "Step."

Curious - do any of you go back to Father of the Bride? I probably haven’t listened to it since the year it came out, although the line “we go together like Keats and Yeats” still pops into mind with disconcerting frequency.

Well I love Hannah Hunt because it’s just such a well written song. The breakup metaphors in the lyrics are simple, but smart. I also love how nothing overstays its welcome… just as you’re about to get impatient by it, it explodes into this brief emotional outburst and then just fades away calmly. It also breaks my heart and I had no idea VW were capable of doing that. I just sort of thought of them as a sunny, quirky band of privileged kids.

Sure. "Unbearably White," "Jerusalem, New York, Berlin," "Harmony Hall," a couple others I'm forgetting. "This Life," like I said, is an all-timer.

so i revisited everything the past few days. thoughts...

first album is fun! they sounded like talking heads a little bit and that was cool. "kids don't stand a chance" is a big tune. 3 mics.

contra hangs together as an album really well. i think that's what makes me like this one a lot more than the first: it has more depth. everything about it: songs are more layered, sequencing tells a better story, just overall amelioration. and "giving up the gun" is on it. 4 mics.

modern vampires was so easy to like because it felt like a pure pop makeover of contra. why wouldn't you like more of a good thing? i like "hannah" a lot but it just doesn't hit the same independent of its album neighbors. it's kind of another 'all or nothing' listen. but always satisfying, even a decade later. 4 mics.

i had never heard father before yesterday. it's alright. idk. country flourishes 'n schitt. it's still pretty new to me, but yes we'll go with 'messy transitional album' for now. it's doing too much, but sounds alright while doing it. same kinda energy as mj putting up 63 and the bulls still losing. oh well, was fun to see! 3 mics (for now).

i will say this to end: none of their material has ever resonated with me as instantly as "classical" has.

imo, all their albums are good to great and jam-packed with hooks. MV happens to be my favorite, too, but I won't argue with anyone who says Contra is best.

Contra remains my favorite, but like j0rdan remarked yesterday, the queer back half colors my reaction.

mvotc is full of piano lines you can sing, they're as strong as the vocal melodies imo

contra is my fav as well, but it's a matter of degrees with the first three. fotb is great tho, and seeing it live upped my appreciation. "jerusalem, new york, berlin" is my fav from that one.

the photo used for this cover art:
https://i.imgur.com/AGfjNLr.jpeg

Looking at FotB I can sing at least Big Blue, 2021, Married in a Gold Rush, and Sunflower without having listened to it in awhile. I also think the 'jam band' thing is way overblown and probably repeated uncritically from the press release/interviews, I mean it's all tightly structured songs without any more instrumental breaks than the new songs.

Also it seems like they may as well make Ariel Reichstadt a band member.

the jam band-y stuff did come through in a live setting. they stretched "sunflower" out to 9 mins, for example.

contra is an album so jam-packed with ideas and hooks that they could have probably made an entire career out of the sound of just one of the songs on it

"mvotc is full of piano lines you can sing, they're as strong as the vocal melodies imo"

this is true of some songs on Contra as well. Taxi Cab comes to mind.

xps I like "Hannah Hunt" quite a bit too. FWIW, whenever I play Vampire Weekend, it's a 16-cut mix drawn from their first three albums, and placed right after "Run," "Hannah Hunt" makes a bigger impression.

The new one's not bad, but I'm still much more partial to their records with Rostam Batmanglij. They're still a singles band to me, and at least going by what's listed here as 'singles,' with the exception of "Horchata," the other 14 from those first three albums are pretty much the ones I go back to, along with "Obvious Bicycle" and "Hannah Hunt."

(Should clarify, the ones where Rostam was a full-fledged band member.)

It's hard not to miss Rostam. Even when you can tell they're still reaching for the same kinds of cultural/sonic juxtapositions (the stiff, properly enunciated choir next to the swing/R&B loop on "Mary Boone," for example), it still doesn't touch the innovation of something like "Diplomat's Son," which still sounds so novel and challenging and effortless and *pleasurable* to me.

Curious - do any of you go back to Father of the Bride?

Just put it on last night as a result of this thread. (the post above where I said I wanted to hear "Harmony Hall" — I did!)

Still enjoyed it. I like singles from the three before it but as I'm sure I've said on other VW threads, I just don't like their rhythm section. It's a hangup for me, the songs feel stifled. I get that for a lot of people those albums work, but they feel claustrophobic and clipped to me. Singles are fine but too many songs in a row and it just feels kinda airless? I think that's a big reason I like the expansiveness and/or sloppiness of FotB.

My revelation on VW in a way came via “Warm Heart of Africa” — I had concluded I didn’t really like the band, but I loved that song and I was like, OK, I like Koenig with a good beat.

i probably rate all of their albums about equally. some aspects i like more about some vs others but it never really cohered into a stable strict ranking. fotb has the most bad songs, but it's also the longest, which should be factored in imo. they're a special band

fotb has the most bad songs, but it's also the longest

duds on fotb: "sympathy", "sunflower", "we belong together"

duds on mvotc: "unbelievers", "everlasting arms", "finger back", "ya hey", "hudson"

unbelievers is a banger, you are tripping

that list of MVotC "duds" is bonko! lol

i'll give you "hudson" but the first 2 are standouts and "finger back" has grown on me.

FotB duds: "married in a gold rush," "my mistake," "sympathy," "we belong together" - that 3 song stretch from "married..." to "sympathy" is the nadir of the record for me.

I love Married in a Goldrush, it's funny and has a great chorus. I'll give you Sympathy, but We Belong Together is a good time. I like all of the Danielle Haim songs.

duds on mvotc: "unbelievers", "everlasting arms", "finger back", "ya hey", "hudson"

are you fucking kidding me

would claim at least three of those as my favorite vampire weekend song

"Ya Hey" IS their best song imo

Midway through my first listen my reaction is that it’d be cool to hear Spoon do a full album cover of these songs

I'll never get past the roboticized squeak in "Ya Hey."

it's a decent lyric but the vocal effect is ridiculous, it's awfully plodding and the bass isn't enough to carry the song either. i have trouble understanding how anyone thinks it's one of their best

happily surprised to see j-zone in the credits for a couple of songs here

never really fucked with them until a few years ago, when I spent an afternoon with the VW essentials equivalent on quobuz, but the indie rock channel via Sirius is playing nothing but the band's shit, the new record and songs they like, this morning it was Genesis "I Can't Dance" and Sean Paul "Like Glue"…

1. He may resemble Paul Simon in multifarious ways (has he acknowledged that he's into Simon?) but vocally he resembles Bob Dorough, uncannily so.

2. A motif that seems to pop up all over his works is this rapidly picked, ascending/descending guitar line…it suggests to me that he cares about fancy guitar playing and aspires to play really really well, way beyond what post indie rock guys typiucally wish to achieve…

3. There's this new song "Capricorn," he talks about recording it in an interview segment and wanting it to be heavy, but a new, original kind of heavy, in between Sabbath and shoegaze shit: and yet, it seems to me that incumbent on "heavy" is to be dark, mean, doomy, and this guy and his band are not capable of projecting that quality, and indeed the resulting recording is not recognizable as heavy.

1. Yep.