Vampire Weekend’s upcoming’s fifth album, Only God Was Above Us is to be released on April 5th on Columbia Records.
The band have released two new songs ‘Capricorn’ and ‘Gen-X Cops’ and accompanying videos from Only God Was Above Us, Vampire Weekend’s first full-length offering from since 2019’s Father of the Bride.
Ezra Koenig, Chris Baio and Chris Tomson make up Vampire Weekend these days and is inspired and haunted by 20th Century New York City, recorded all over the world, from Manhattan to Los Angeles to London and Tokyo.
Watch videos here:
Only God Was Above Us was primarily produced by Koenig and longtime collaborator Ariel Rechtshaid, mixed by Dave Fridmann and mastered by Emily Lazar.
The beginnings of Only God Was Above Us stretch back to 2019-2020, when Koenig wrote the bulk of the lyrics. 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 — the 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.”
Vampire Weekend – Only God Above Us Tracklist
- Ice Cream Piano
- Classical
- Capricorn
- Connect
- Prep-School Gangsters
- The Surfer
- Gen-X Cops
- Mary Boone
- Pravda
- Hope
Only God Was Above Us is available digitally, and physically on CD, standard black vinyl, limited edition clear vinyl on the band’s webstore, and with an alternate album cover available exclusively at Independent retailers.
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005 . He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, club promoter, event curator and producer of gigs, listening parties & events in Dublin.
