Only God Was Above Us - Vampire Weekend
I've only previously heard one Vampire Weekend song. A-Punk came out when I was at university. It was briefly massive and I fucking hated it, so I never listened to them. It's patently absurd to go into an album assuming that it will sound like the one song you heard nearly 20 years ago, but since that was my only reference point for the band that's what I took into this.
Unsurprisingly, this record wasn't what I expected at all. A lot of it sounds like Ok Go to me, while there are moments like the synth leads on Classical that put me in mind of Bombay Bicycle Club. All of this is a positive. I wasn't expecting to hear double bass and weird tape-warped piano. I wasn't expecting this to be weird at all. But it is, and those weird moments - such as Connect, which gets stranger as it goes on - are some of my favourite points on the album.
I really need to talk about the mix here, because it's fascinating. These arrangements are light and airy, with an almost dreamlike quality to them. But the bottom end is tight and dense and claustrophobic, so that there's a tension to everything that feels almost nightmarish. This is particularly present on Capricorn - another track that puts me in mind of Ok Go, or 13-era Blur - which is another highlight on the album.
Aside from a few standout tracks, though, I ultimately found this to be mostly forgettable. It's certainly not bad, but all the parts that stood out to me largely remind me of other bands I'd prefer to listen to. It's not what I expected, in a positive way, but it's not something I'll come back to.