After years of teasing, including some ramped-up activity this week, Vampire Weekend have officially announced their fifth studio album. The new album, Only God Was Above Us, is out April 5 via Columbia. Two songs from the LP—“Capricorn” and “Gen-X Cops”—are out February 16. See the album cover and tracklist, as well as a trailer, below.
Ezra Koenig, Chris Baio, and Chris Tomson recorded the follow-up to Father of the Bride in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Tokyo. Koenig produced the album with Ariel Rechtshaid, and it was mixed by Dave Fridmann and mastered by Emily Lazar.
Koenig wrote most of the lyrics for Only God Was Above Us in 2019 and 2020. The album’s title comes from a newspaper headline featured in a 1988 photograph by Steven Siegel. The photograph, called Subway Dream 11, doubles as the new Vampire Weekend album cover.
After releasing their first three albums over a five-year span, Vampire Weekend have taken to spreading out their new releases. Father of the Bride arrived in May 2019, six years after Modern Vampires of the City. In between those two albums, founding member Rostam Batmanglij left Vampire Weekend (although he still contributed to the group’s fourth LP).
Vampire Weekend won the 2020 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album for Father of the Bride. After coming of age in New York, Koenig recorded the album primarily in California, working with Ariel Rechtshaid, Steve Lacy, Danielle Haim, and others.
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