Only God Was Above Us, the fifth studio album — and first in five years — from Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, Chris Baio and Chris Tomson, is due out April 5 from Columbia Records. Inspired and haunted by 20th Century New York City, the album was recorded all over the world, from Manhattan to Los Angeles to London and Tokyo. Only God Was Above Us was primarily produced by Koenig and longtime collaborator Ariel Rechtshaid, mixed by Dave Fridmann and mastered by Emily Lazar. Watch the album trailer HERE.
The beginnings of Only God Was Above Us stretch 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 a 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.
Only God Was Above Us is nothing short of a definitive statement — one that begins on a playfully profane and confrontational note, and runs a gauntlet of emotions, experiences, characters and stories, before ending on an unambiguous note of acceptance… and quite literally “Hope”:
“I hope you let it go
I hope you let it go
Our enemy’s invincible
I hope you let it go”
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.”
The tracklist is as follows:
Ice Cream Piano
Classical
Capricorn
Connect
Prep-School Gangsters
The Surfer
Gen-X Cops
Mary Boone
Pravda
Hope
To celebrate their release week, Vampire Weekend will perform in Austin, TX at the Moody Amphitheater at noon on April 8th during the historic total eclipse. Tickets for this special event go on sale on February 13th at 10am CT. Pre-sale and general information can be found at www.vampireweekend.com.
Only God Was Above Us is the first full-length offering from Vampire Weekend since 2019’s Father of the Bride, which was the band’s third consecutive #1 album on the Billboard 200. Nominated for an Album of the Year GRAMMY, Father of the Bride won Best Alternative Album, marking the band’s second win in that category. Deemed “a masterpiece” by David Fricke of Rolling Stone, the album and its coinciding tour of sold-out arenas, sheds and festival headlining slots, solidified the Tri-State born and bred VW as the preeminent band of the New York rock scene, or in the words of USA Today, “The best indie band of their generation.”
Only God Was Above Us will be 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. Pre-order here.
