Photo Credit: Michael Schmelling

Vampire Weekend’s long-awaited fifth studio album, Only God Was Above Us, is only two weeks away, with a release set for April 5 via Columbia Records. Since its first announcement earlier this year, the band has done everything to build anticipation for its forthcoming release to a fever pitch, most recently sitting down with The New York Times for a conversation on the project. In this thorough profile, the trio finds its way to discussing the album’s origins, that crucible of five years and a pandemic that gave rise to yet another sonic transformation; in this retrospective view, the band recalled a development of vital interest to fans of all the band’s many faces: the emergence of a new “punky” and “jammy” side project.

When the world shuttered in 2020, Vampire Weekend found itself returned to LA and encumbered with sudden empty time and social distance. Hot off the release of its Grammy-winning 2019 album Father of The Bride and staring down a slew of canceled tour dates, the group channeled its accrued creative energy into a series of weekly, prolific jam sessions, in which the artists–each contributing from different rooms in a repurposed medical office–recorded hundreds of hours of music. “The world had stopped working and a lot of what we normally do was just not being done,” shares drummer Chris Tomson. “There was something about just playing with no expectation — to just play with my two very close friends without an agenda.”

“It felt like being at the outset of the band again,” echoes bassist Chris Baio. “And we did that for three years and change, whenever we were all in town.” Rare intimate discussions and unbounded creative catharsis allowed the band to slip out from under its high-concept, perfectionist tendencies to produce music that was reflexive of and conducive to its identity reformation. At times, the band was not playing as Vampire Weekend at all, but rather a new trio, whose yet-unreleased material shot up from the nearly 20-year outfit’s return to its roots.

“We kind of have an imaginary back story for that band,” Ezra Koenig elucidates, adding color and concept to the fresh venture. “It was a band that came out around 1989, 1990, and they were a little bit too punky for the jam scene and a little bit too jammy for the punk scene. And there’s a little bit of the Minutemen in there. The truth is, this is very premature because that band is still hashing out its sound. I don’t want to say too much.” With this binary between “jam” and “punk,” the group continues a thread throughout its discography of balancing opposed ideas and influences to find a more nuanced and singular sound in the gray area.

Vampire Weekend’s engagement with jam is well-documented, perhaps most notably in its 2019 decision to expand its live band to a septet, embracing the idiosyncrasy and unpredictability of live collaboration, rather than rigidly recreating its standards. The group carried this torch further in 2021 with 40:42, an EP comprised of two freely-flowing collaborations with pioneering jazz saxophonist Sam Gendel, who co-wrote “Flower Moon” and “Spring Snow” on Father of the Bride, and jam-scene favorite Goose, each side running to a tidy 20 minutes and 21 seconds. 

In a conversation between Vampire Weekend and Goose for the April-May 2021 issue of Relix, Koenig highlights the jam current in the band’s influences, sharing, “I always liked the Dead, and I’ve definitely gotten more into Phish as I’ve gotten older. But, I also gotta shout out our drummer C.T. [Chris Tomson]. We both grew up in New Jersey, but we came at it from different directions. He’s like a jam dude—he’s seen Phish all these times. My curiosity was always piqued by it. He has this Phillies parody Phish shirt and he wore it on TV once; he was always trying to subtly fly the flag.”

On April 18, Vampire Weekend will hit the road for a 39-date album tour that will keep the group in the wind until Oct. 27. On the possibility of its enigmatic new trio opening for these performances, Koenig opaquely noted, “That has been discussed.” While awaiting the release of Only God Was Above Us on April 5, listen to the preview singles “Capricorn,” “Gen-X Cops” and “Classical” for a first taste. The band’s fifth full-length–and self-proclaimed “magnum opus”– is available to pre-order and pre-save now.