Nine months ago, when my wife and I packed our belongings and moved from West Michigan to Chicagoland, I did something I’d never done before: Alone in the U-Haul, I listened to four albums in a row by the same band, start to finish. Typically, when I’m on the road, I like to mix things up, checking out new tunes after jamming to old favorites. Three hours is a long time to listen to any group or artist, regardless of how much I like their sound. But this time was different. Cruising down the interstate, I needed to process the wildest year of my life, and I couldn’t think of a better soundtrack for that reflection than the collected works of my favorite band, Vampire Weekend.
In November of 2022, I renounced the religion of my upbringing and came out publicly as an agnostic. This decision was the most difficult step I’d ever taken. I grew up in a devout, tight-knit Christian community, the son of evangelical missionaries. As far back as I can remember, faith was the animating center of my life, the framework through which I interpreted everything. Consequently, when I left the church, I found myself in a mental and emotional tailspin. Questions flooded in, swirling over the rubble of my old worldview: If God doesn’t exist, then what’s the point of it all? Is life meaningless if it ends at the grave? Does the universe care about my welfare? How do I make ethical decisions if there’s no transcendent standard of good and evil? Is there any hope for humanity, or is everything doomed to extinction? I had no answers to these questions, and I didn’t even know where to start looking. All my maps were gone.
My spiritual deconstruction wasn’t the only change requiring attention. Around the time I stopped attending church, I also got married, moved into a new apartment, left a long-standing position in social work, embarked on a stressful job hunt, and finally said goodbye to a beloved hometown and community. In a matter of months, my whole world had rearranged itself, and I was knee-deep in an existential crisis. So, as I fired up the U-Haul in preparation for my journey to Chicago, I decided to get my bearings – to reflect on where I’d come from, where I was going, and who I was in the in-between. I needed to chart a course through the wilderness, and that’s why Vampire Weekend’s catalog was queued up.
If you listen to Vampire Weekend’s music long enough, you’ll start to notice connections popping up everywhere. Despite their distinctiveness, the group’s albums aren’t easily separated. They flow together like threads in a tapestry or chapters in a book – each one building on its predecessor and setting up its sequel, each one tackling familiar topics from new angles, and each one drawing meaning from its place in a larger whole. Lead singer Ezra Koenig has repeatedly alluded to a narrative arc in Vampire Weekend’s discography, framing it as a Bildungsroman or “coming of age” tale.1 Beginning with the bright, rollicking notes of their self-titled debut, expanding into the variegated colors and textures of Contra, descending into the dark strains of Modern Vampires of the City, and easing into the loose-limbed grooves of Father of the Bride, Vampire Weekend evoked the passage of time with thoughtful lyrics and ingenious, genre-bending indie rock.
After digging into the band’s music for the past several years, mulling over their lyrics, and reading many reviews and interviews, I thought I had Vampire Weekend’s trajectory figured out. That changed on April 5, when the group dropped their fifth album – Only God Was Above Us – to critical acclaim. As I’ve studied the new songs and revisited the band’s earlier work, I’ve been challenged to reexamine a familiar narrative with fresh eyes. This has led to a thrilling discovery: The whole is far deeper and richer than I could have imagined. Vampire Weekend’s latest album answers a question that beats at the very heart of their work, pulsing like lifeblood through everything they’ve created: How can we continue to love a world that has broken our hearts time and time again? Put differently, when life itself becomes unrecognizable, confounding all our expectations, how do we reorient ourselves and keep moving forward?
There are lots of great articles that examine the musical progression of Vampire Weekend’s albums. Yet I haven’t found many that discuss the band’s catalog from a lyrical perspective, tracing narrative threads from the first album to the latest. As a literature teacher, I geek out over well-told tales, and I’m convinced that Vampire Weekend’s discography isn’t just a series of musical masterpieces; it’s also a sweeping, timeless story that begs for literary analysis. Like any great work of literature, these lyrics reward contemplation, gracing careful listeners with profound insights into the human condition.
So, without further ado, I’m excited to announce a new series of blog posts! Over the next several weeks, to celebrate the release of Only God Was Above Us, I’ll analyze each of Vampire Weekend’s albums through a literary lens, situating it within the band’s narrative exploration of the world we inhabit. If you’ve never checked out Vampire Weekend (!!!), or if you’re one of those people who never ventured beyond “A-Punk” and “Oxford Comma,” I hope these posts will inspire you to give their records a spin. Trust me, you’ll be grateful that you did. If you’re already a Vampire Weekend fan, I hope these posts will unearth treasure in familiar ground, deepening your appreciation for the band. Whether you savor each album separately or swallow them all in a single gulp, these works of art will change you if you let them. And if, like me, you’re wrestling with changing seasons or are struggling to find your way in a world you thought you knew, these indie rockers are welcome companions for the journey.
Click here for my analysis of Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut – “Wide-Eyed Wonderment: A Literary Analysis of Vampire Weekend“: https://wordsforwayfarers.com/2024/05/04/wide-eyed-wonderment-a-literary-analysis-of-vampire-weekend/
References:
1. Pareles, John. “Setting Their Sights on Wider Vistas.” The New York Times, 8 May 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/arts/music/vampire-weekends-evolution-in-modern-vampires-of-the-city.html. Accessed 28 April 2024.
Words for Wayfarers 