In May 1988, the New York Daily News reported on the crash of Aloha Airlines Flight 243, when a structural failure during flight detached the top of the machine. According to one passenger only God was above usk. This is the phrase for Vampire Weekend’s new album, which was released a few days ago Only God Was Above Usalso has the title.
The big question of the album is what lies beneath us. What’s under, say, New York? What is in your sewer network? What’s in your subconscious? What happened to the town after the band members left it and moved to sunny Los Angeles? How does he relate to the band’s former patron, Paul Simon and the Gracelan for his album d? Well, they didn’t forget about it this time either.
The charm of vampires
The Only God Was Above Us is Vampire Weekend’s fifth studio album and the first effort recorded by singer-guitarist Ezra Koenig, bassist Chris Baio, and drummer Chris Tomson as a trio following the departure of keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij in 2016. They didn’t hurry, five years have passed since the last, Father of the Bride (2019) was released.
The new record drew a lot from the pop-cultural aesthetics of New York of the last century, the album cover itself refers to the constantly renewing cultural diversity of the city, which is both dirty and brilliantly creative. Of course, Vampire Weekend’s new album isn’t a tourist blog about New York, full of song-like posts, Tripadvisor recommendations, and mit’s not just a kind of nostalgia race about the abandoned, but still beloved hometown.
Between heaven and earth
When the band turns to the past, it does so only to find something new in the old. Instead of self-mythology, it is an honest revelation, and the focus is on history rather than adolescent memoirs. Ezra Koenig is interested in the New York that once raised him, its spirituality, the world of galleries, club concerts, the heroes that the city brought under its influence, and they influenced the development of global culture.
The album is as colorful as New York itself. There is Indian raga, hip-hop, motifs referring to The Strokes, while Vampire Weekend worked against the streamlined New York trends that appeared in the early 2000s.
Fuck The World – is the opening sentence of the album Ice Cream Piano in the song titled, and it can already be guessed that they no longer have much in common with the former middle-class guys who attended Columbia, who easily brought the baroque beat and the pleasantly diverse indie-pop.
They already have something to do with history, not university parties or the Holiday for their reggae-influenced song, which was also used in a Honda Civic and a Tommy Hilfiger commercial. That’s it Ice Cream Pianocan clearly see the radical eclecticism, when a string quartet chases a turbocharged rock theme, and then the whole thing ends as if we were hearing an unknown prog-rock band from East Germany from 1972.
Escape from New York
The 2018 one Father of the Bride After 18 numerous offers, we now only get ten shots, including the last one, Hope the nine-minute song. THE When Only God Was Above Ushas a richer creative arsenal, bolder arrangements, and although this is a telepiano album with more modest guitar playing, it still has a much wider stylistic range. The disc is an experimental microcosm full of popular gestures, a Connect The experiment entitled – narrating a duel between strings and piano – should be presented at the MÜPÁ rather than, say, at the Sziget Festival. No fairy tale, a When Only God Was Above Us perhaps the most exciting indie-rock venture of the year.
Come with me!
That’s what Koenig sings on their 2008 debut album Mansard Roof in his song, that from the roof you can see the hot garbage, the concrete floor, a nautical chart and the roofs of the buildings. That’s how things come together. The new album explores the perspective of an airplane when only God was above the passengers. Perhaps there was already someone above them in 2008, but only now have they reached the point in composing that they can see not only the roofs of buildings, but also the one who lives above the clouds.
Vampire Weekend: Only God Was Above Us
universal, 10 tracks, 47 minutes
10/8
