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Apr 12, 2024 By Mark Redfern

Vampire Weekend released a new album, Only God Was Above Us, last week via Columbia. This week, they were guests on The Daily Show, where they performed the album’s “Mary Boone” and were interviewed. They also sat in with the jam band Goose at The Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY, where they performed the album’s “Gen-X Cops” and did an extended 30-minute plus jam of “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,” from the band’s self-titled debut album. And they also covered Grateful Dead’s “Peggy-O.” They were aided by Amber Coffman and violinist Ray Suen and it was for SiriusXMU. Watch it all below.

Also, read our rave 9/10 review of the album here.

Previously the band shared its first two singles: “Capricorn” and “Gen-X Cops.” Both songs made our Songs of the Week list. Then they shared its third single, “Classical,” via a music video. “Classical” also landed on our Songs of the Week list.

It’s fourth single was “Mary Boone.” The song’s namesake, Mary Boone, is an influential art collector in New York City who was dubbed by New York Magazine, in a 1982 cover story on her, “The New Queen of the Art Scene.” In 2019 she was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison because of tax invasion. “Mary Boone” was #1 on our Songs of the Week list.

Vampire Weekend’s tour will feature various support acts, depending on the date, including LA LOM, The English Beat, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Mike Gordon, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Ra Ra Riot, Princess featuring Maya Rudolph and Gretchen Lieberum, Cults, a DJ Set By Mark Ronson, Turnstiles (a Billy Joel tribute band), and The Brothers Macklovitch. In select cities they are doing evening shows on a Saturday night, followed by a matinee show the next day. Check out the tour poster below for info on which artist is opening where.

Previously Vampire Weekend shared a trailer for the album, as well as its tracklist and cover artwork.

Only God Was Above Us is the band’s fifth album, their first new album in five years, and the follow-up to Father of the Bride. Father of the Bride was our Album of the Week, it debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 album chart with the largest first week sales for any rock album in 2019, and you can stream it here. It was also nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammys.

Vampire Weekend is Ezra Koenig, Chris Baio, and Chris Tomson. Koenig wrote most of the album’s lyrics in 2019 and 2020 and the band have been refining the album since then, recording in various cities around the world, including New York, Los Angeles, London, and Tokyo. Koenig produced the album with longtime collaborator Ariel Rechtshaid and it was mixed by Dave Fridmann and mastered by Emily Lazar.

A press release promises that the album is “direct yet complex, showing the band at once at its grittiest, and also at its most beautiful and melodic.”

The album’s cover artwork also inspired its title. It is a photo taken in 1988 by Steven Siegel at a subway graveyard in New Jersey. In the photo is a man sitting in a turned over subway car, reading the May 1, 1988 edition of The New York Daily News. The cover of the newspaper details an airplane accident on Aloha Airlines flight 243, when an explosion tore the roof off. The headline of the newspaper quotes a survivor saying, “Only God was above us,” which is now the title of the new album.

We were the first nationally distributed print magazine to interview Vampire Weekend, way back in 2007, and you can revisit that article here.

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