Only God Was Above Us, the fifth studio album from Vampire Weekend, is due out April 5 through Columbia Records. The album was recorded all over the world where it was primarily produced by Ezra Koenig and longtime collaborator Ariel Rechtshaid, mixed by Dave Fridmann and mastered by Emily Lazar.
The beginnings of Only God Was Above Us goes back to 2019-2020, when Koenig wrote the bulk of the lyrics. The 10 track magnum opus is the product of five years spent refining, reworking and gradually shaping those lyrical and melodic structures to take Vampire Weekend to new creative peak. The album is direct yet complex, showing the band at once at its grittiest, and also at its most beautiful and melodic.
The album is nothing short of a definitive statement, which begins on a playfully profane and confrontational note, while running through a gauntlet of emotions, experiences, characters and stories, before ending on an unambiguous note of acceptance and hope.
The title is lifted directly from the album artwork, comprised of photos taken from a subway graveyard in New Jersey in 1988 by Steven Siegel. In the album’s cover, a man in a toppled subway car reads the May 1, 1988 edition of the New York Daily News, which a cover story detailing the horrific explosion that tore the roof off Aloha Airlines flight 243. The headline quotes a survivor: “ONLY GOD WAS ABOVE US.”
Only God Was Above Us Trackist
- Ice Cream Piano
- Classical
- Capricorn
- Connect
- Prep-School Gangsters
- The Surfer
- Gen-X Cops
- Mary Boone
- Pravda
- Hope
Photo Credit: Stephen Hoffmeister
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