Album of the Week: Father of the Bride — Vampire Weekend
Six years after their last album, Vampire Weekend have returned with a new release, the encyclopaedic Father of the Bride.
Over the course of their first three albums, Vampire Weekend cultivated a reputation for producing a particularly erudite brand of music. Literate lyricism; a flair for patch-working disparate musical influences; and an image that, for many critics, so obviously betrayed their Ivy League education. These were some of the things that made the band so successful, and yet, equally, so divisive. But even when, on that self-titled debut album, frontman Ezra Koenig sang about the infamous ‘Oxford Comma’, it was in a knowing and derisive manner. The track might have been inspired by Koenig’s time at Columbia, an environment marked by privilege, but it simultaneously embraced and renounced that privilege, with a charm that has continued to accompany the band’s output ever since.
But in the six years that have passed since Vampire Weekend’s last release, much has changed. Koenig has become a father, produced a Netflix series, and established a biweekly Beats Radio show. Multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij has left the band to dedicate himself to personal ventures, returning to produce a couple of tracks on the new album. And bassist Chris Baio and drummer Chris Tomson have also taken to developing their solo careers. Vampire Weekend aren’t dripping in Ralph Lauren anymore: boat shoes have been retired in favour of socks and sandals. This album isn’t adorned with the polaroid-esque artwork that covered the band’s first three, and the cartoonish globe it features instead pops with bright hues that might once have been reserved for only the finest of chinos. As the album artwork suggests, then, today’s Vampire Weekend are worldlier, and, with six years’ worth of ideas to inform this new album, it’s no wonder that Father of the Bride sprawls across eighteen tracks.
When the album is at its best, Koenig’s intelligent lyricism is set against a rich musical palette. ‘Harmony Hall’, a track that was teased with a two-hour-long YouTube upload of its ornate guitar arrangement, is a welcome return to Vampire Weekend’s baroque pop past. Jubilant piano riffs feature heavily, at times sounding like something from Primal Scream’s Screamadelica, whilst the lyric “I don’t wanna live like this, but I don’t wanna die” rewards avid fans by echoing ‘Finger Back’, from the album Modern Vampires of the City. Each song bleeds into the next, with a scrap of recording-studio conversation occasionally bridging the gap. These moments produce an illusory sense of coherence, but fail to hide the fact that the album’s sonic range sometimes leaves songs feeling out of place. The folk-country duets with Danielle Haim, however, are undoubtedly at home in the track listing. The first of these, ‘Hold You Now’, marries the vocals of Haim and Koenig together with great success, with interstitial samplings of a Melanesian choral song serenely heralding Vampire Weekend’s return.
But even tracks like the initially stripped-back ‘How Long’ — the title of which has been unknowingly uttered by pleading fans for the duration of the band’s six-year hiatus — still warrant attention. What this bass-driven track lacks in intricacy it compensates for with its playfulness. Halfway through, a glimpse of a pizzicato string arrangement evokes a nostalgia for the heavily baroque influences of the band’s early days, before the ‘boing’ of a flexatone dashes memories of the past. Reference to the US political climate even creeps into the lyrics, as Koenig questions: “What’s the point of human beings? / A Sharpie face on tangerines / Why’s it felt like Halloween since Christmas 2017?” It’s a lyric that needs little explanation, but revels in an understated wit.
The track ‘Unbearably White’ is knowingly named, a nod to the criticism the band have encountered in the past, but it sees them, as ever, boldly assert their talent. Only Ezra Koenig could, with seeming sincerity, deliver the words “Baby I love you / But that’s not enough / And pulling away has been unbearably buff”, then, within the same verse, play upon the audible ambiguity of the word “floe”. There is a confidence about this record, even when entering into uncharted territory, and it shines through on tracks such as ‘My Mistake’, where Koenig’s mournful vocals are backed by delicate piano. It’s a track that wouldn’t be out of place in a moody cocktail lounge. For listeners of Koenig’s Beats Radio show, Time Crisis, the scat singing on ‘Sunflower’ is likely to resonate, emerging from a regularly expressed interest in jam bands. This track — and its counterpart, the jazz-inspired ‘Flower Moon’ — feature The Internet’s Steve Lacy, whose warm vocals often provide the harmonies, are the ‘Flower Moon’ to Koenig’s ‘Sunflower’.
It has been six years since Vampire Weekend’s last album, six years since the track ‘Step’, on which Ezra Koenig sang the words: “Wisdom’s a gift, but you’d trade it for youth / Age is an honour, it’s still not the truth”. And though, as the lyrics themselves concede, the passing of time is no key to wisdom, it has, in the case of Vampire Weekend, been the key to something. Father of the Bride is the sound of a band ambitiously broadening their horizons. It’s rough around the edges in a way that wouldn’t have been befitting of their previously preppy image. But, in 2019, it is a very promising place to be.
Written also with the input of Rachel.
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