Vampire Weekend announced their highly anticipated new album, Only God Was Above Us will drop on April 5th. It’s the fifth album from the band and first in five years from Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, Chris Baio and Chris Tomson. Only God Was Above Us is the first full-length offering from Vampire Weekend since 2019’s Father of the Bride.

Inspired and haunted by 20th Century New York City, the album was recorded all over the world, from Manhattan to Los Angeles to London and Tokyo. The album was produced by Koenig and longtime collaborator Ariel Rechtshaid, mixed by Dave Fridmann and mastered by Emily Lazar. Watch the :30 album trailer HERE. 

The beginnings of Only God Was Above Us stretch back to 2019-2020, when Koenig wrote the bulk of the lyrics. The 10-track magnum opus 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. Only God Was Above Us is nothing short of a definitive statement — one that begins on a playfully profane and confrontational note, and runs a gauntlet of emotions, experiences, characters and stories, before ending on an unambiguous note of acceptance… and quite literally “Hope.” 

The title is lifted directly from the album artwork, comprised of photos taken from a subway graveyard in New Jersey in 1988 by Steven Siegel. In the album’s cover, a man in a toppled subway car reads the May 1, 1988 edition of the New York Daily News — the cover story detailing the horrific explosion that tore the roof off Aloha Airlines flight 243. The headline quotes a survivor: “ONLY GOD WAS ABOVE US.”

To celebrate their release week, Vampire Weekend will perform in Austin at the Moody Amphitheater on April 8th at noon during the historic total eclipse. Tickets for this special event go on sale on February 13th at 10am (CT) at www.vampireweekend.com.