- 2024-04-07
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MUSIC
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Donate to support families affected by the crisis in Ukraine ➔ Vampire Weekend Releases New Album “Only God Was Above Us”
American rock band Vampire Weekend, consisting of Ezra Koenig (vocals/guitar), Chris Baio (bass) and Chris Tomson (drums), released the fifth studio album “Only God Was Above Us” on April 5, 2024 via Columbia Records.
The album is their first body of work in five years since the 2019 album “Father of the Bride”.
It is the first release as a trio after the 2016 departure of keyboard plyer Rostam Batmanglij.
The album comprises a 10-track, co-produced by Ezra Koenig and their longtime producer Ariel Rechtshaid, with additional production by Chris Tomson, and former member Rostam Batmanglij.
Also The album is inspired and haunted by 20th century New York City. The band recorded the album in Manhattan, Los Angeles, London and Tokyo.
The band Ezra Koenig said of the album, “I know we have fans out there who can remember the release days of each of our albums going all the way back to LP1 in 2008. Thanks for still listening. We're honored to know our music has been a part of your life.”
He continued, “We've done our best to drop info about the album without giving too much away. Lots of interviews and profiles and reviews out there if you're into those kind of things. Ultimately, it's yours to interpret.”
He added, “All I'll say is: this album is kinda heavy but we had a ball making it. Hope you are all having a ball whether life is feeling light, heavy or somewhere in-between. Which reminds me of one of my favorite quotes: 'You can't stop the waves but you can learn to surf'”- Ezra Koenig told NPR about the album title and cover art, “There's a photo I came across that really stayed with me. It's this kind of, like, gritty '80s New York picture with a messed up subway car, but there's this surreal quality because there's a guy sitting normally on the seat, and then there's a guy who's sideways. It's not edited, no Photoshop. It was because this photographer, Steven Siegel, took a bunch of photos of his friends posed in a subway graveyard in New Jersey in 1988. So they could play with the gravity a bit because the subway car was overturned, kind of like an old-school, like, Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling trick.”
He continued, “As I learned more about Steven Siegel, I realized that this guy has hundreds of amazing pictures from that era and even had video footage, so his work has become a huge part of this album and its visual identity. And I love this picture so much that I ultimately decided I didn't want to throw our logo on it or a title. And the only text on the cover is the newspaper that this guy's reading, which was a real Daily News cover from 1988. And the headline was 'Only God Was Above Us,' and it was a story about a Hawaiian Airlines flight where the roof came off mid-flight. But this was a direct quote from a survivor of that flight. 'I looked up. Only God was above us.'” - Ezra Koenig explained bout some tracks for the album via NPR.
“Connect”
“It had kind of, like, this old-school New York flavor, but there's a bunch of twists and turns within it, a lot of things that have always loomed large in my mind, such as the sandhogs. My dad briefly was a tunnel inspector for the city, and he would tell me these stories about being down a mile underneath Manhattan, working with sandhogs, and that's a phrase, especially when you're a kid, you're not going to forget.
So that's always been something I've thought about, the tunnels of New York and the underground and these amazing construction projects.
Well, I think everybody feels that way sometimes. This song is track four on the album. And I was happy to notice that some of these songs that have a little more riddled with anxiety and gloom are towards the beginning. It doesn't stay there. But, you know, this song is an important part of the journey.”
“Gen-X Cops”
“At first, I just wanted to have a song called "Gen-X Cops". That's a late-90s Hong Kong action movie that I remember being very interested in growing up, and then I think I thought more about Gen-X cops. Why was I actually attracted to that phrase? At least in my lifetime, I can't think of a time where I've heard more talk about generations, decisions the boomers made. I'm a millennial.”
“Mary Boone”
“A famous, iconic, downtown New York gallerist. I was mostly interested in her as this kind of famous figure of the downtown New York art scene. The character in the song is not her. It's somebody addressing her. I kind of pictured the person who wants to make it, the person who comes to the city, literally or metaphorically, looking for a way in. And this idea of the person looming on the dark side of a room - it felt kind of rich to me. And also, you know, she's got a great name, Mary Boone. Gagosian would not be as easy to rhyme.”
Photo by Michael Schmelling - source : Apple Music
