Vampire Weekend - Only God Was Above Us Track By Track

8 April 2024, 15:59 | Updated: 8 April 2024, 16:05

Ezra Koenig takes Radio X's John Kennedy through Vampire Weekend's fifth studio album, which includes the tracks Capricorn and Gen-X Cops.

By Radio X

@RadioX

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Vampire Weekend released their fifth album, Only God Was Above Us, on 5th April 2024.

The band - fronted by Ezra Koenig - say the new album was written between 2019 and 2020 and the lyrical content concerns "20th Century New York", with press release describing the record as a "magnum opus [which] 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."

Koenig came into the Radio X studios to take our very own John Kennedy through Only God Was Above Us track by track in a very special X-Posure Album Playback. You can watch the full video above, or listen to the Track By Track podcast on Global Player.

Vampire Weekend - Only God Was Above Us track by track podcast

Vampire Weekend in 2024: Chris Baio, Ezra Koenig and Chris Tomson. Picture: Michael Schmelling/Press

Ezra says of the "raw" sound of some of the new album: "It takes a lot of work to make it sound that raw. It's a natural tendency of humans to be 'raw'. If you were trying to produce something 'slick' in the 70s or 80s, you'd need world class musicians, a world class producer - that would be the hardest thing in the world to do, you know? To make Thriller, or something, the best of the best.

"Whereas today, the default mode of music production is loops on a grid, so to make something that has a little bit of natural sway and movement and the tinest speed up or the tiniest slow down - like you might get in a live performance - actually takes more work. It's much easier to make something that sounds slick now. The middle ground where we leave the life in, takes forever."