Too old for dyin' young, too young to live alone

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2024.

#35 : Only God Was Above Us - Vampire Weekend

It takes an extremely fleet pen for a band to release an album mired in self-referentiality and pull it off – not least when that band is Vampire Weekend, who for 16 years have doubled as shorthand (often unfairly) for a particular kind of self-regarding aesthete. But their fifth album exists in the long shadow cast by 2019’s sunny Father of the Bride, Ezra Koenig plotting the distance between the band’s youthful idealism and the surrender to ideological defeat that can come with middle age. The guitars and keys often sound weathered too, but the frenzied gallop of songs such as Ice Cream Piano, or Connect, with piano as skittish as a sky of sycamore helicopters, speak to a level of insurgent awareness that would still put many of their younger peers to shame.

This is our fourth visit with Vampire Weekend and they're an odd bunch - I conceptually like them and often also actually liked them, but then they go out of their way to be far too clever-clever which just results in me being annoyed with them. I'm interested to listen to this though and am hoping they've managed to rein themselves in (whilst not actually expecting them to have done so).

Actually, I didn't get too annoyed with any of it - there's some very decent tracks on this. I listened to it whilst doing the gardening and I do think it would have benefited from a bit more attention, so I might try to revisit it when I'm not trying to work my way through quite so many albums (I had ten to sample to varying degrees on Saturday!). But from what I heard of this album, it was their usual level of playful world-weariness with decent lyrics and some nice musical twiddles (but fortunately not too many). And I like the album cover as well.

Wikipedia tells us it's their fifth album, but their first as a trio because Rostam Batmanglij left after the third album and the fourth one was really only an Ezra Koenig solo album (but still released as Vampire Weekend) - some bands are just too hard to keep up with. The album title is actually a real headline as shown on the cover - it's a quote from a passenger on a flight which unfortunately lost its roof mid-flight. One other cool fact for you - the first night of the tour was played on Ezra Koenig's 40th birthday at an amphitheatre and it was timed to coincide with a total solar eclipse. The critics were VERY keen on the album and it's appeared on a lot of year-end lists - Pitchfork have even declared it #98 on their best albums of the 20s list (I suspect it might drop off over the next six years though). It's also done well commercially, getting to #11 here (the best so far on this list) and #27 in the US. 

"Customers also listened to" The Black Keys, Cold War Kids, Waxahatchee and St Vincent - none of whom, as far as I'm aware, sound overly like Vampire Weekend. I really liked this though and will be making an effort to listen to it some time when I'm not doing the gardening.

#34 : Cartoon Darkness - Amyl And The Sniffers

“The haters” might be one of pop’s most boring subjects; anyone minded to bemoan them should take Amyl’s Amy Taylor as the gold standard. “Need to wipe your mouth after you speak / ’Cause it’s an asshole” she spits on Cro-Magnon rager Jerkin’; “there’s too many snags at the party” on Tiny Bikini – as in, sensitive new age guys, the type to tediously profess their feminist credentials. Pub rock inveterates, Amyl and the Sniffers aren’t exactly the type of band to have matured on their third album, but the expansive, incantatory Big Dreams reflected a new mode, and offered a bit of Taylor’s spark to anyone in need of it: “Hey! When ya get down, oh you’re a lit one / Never been a dull one / Always been a big star.”

This is the second album I've listened to on the list so far and it got a three sentence write-up in passing as a new entry - "There's definitely no lack of energy here - it's all go, go, go. It's not really my kind of thing but at least it's fun and they're not holding back. It's "quite" the album cover as well".

And having given it a second listen, I fully concur with my previous review. Amy isn't one to hold back with letting you know her opinions and it's fair to say she's got some axes to grind - a whole album of it could get too much, but there's only 33 minutes of it so I think they get away with it. It won't be for everyone, but I can imagine they're a load of fun live - and as you can see, it most definitely is "quite" the album cover.

Wikipedia tells us this is their third album (I'm imagining the other two don't sound massively different). Amy explains the album is about "climate crisis, war, A.I., tiptoeing on the eggshells of politics, and people feeling like they're helping by having a voice online when we're all just feeding the data beast of Big Tech, our modern-day god" - which I have to admit I didn't pick up on. The critics were pretty nice about it and it's done very well commercially - #9 here (so Vampire Weekend's reign didn't last long) and in Germany, #2 in Australia and even a mighty #198 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" Lambrini Girls, Panic Shack, SOFT PLAY and The Chats - I had to listen to the SOFT PLAY album earlier this year and that was quite enough to scare me off the rest of them. But this album was at least a bit of fun for a couple of listens, even if I suspect that's probably it for me now.

#33 : Girl - Coco & Clair Clair

From Charli xcx to Sabrina Carpenter and this Atlanta duo, cool-girl intimidation was one of 2024’s abiding musical moods. “Gotta have competition to make a diss track, ho,” Coco & Clair Clair taunted on Aggy, their savage pen countered by deceptively sweet, low-slung synth-pop and nursery-rhyme-catchy choruses. You might argue that they really do seem to fear the competition from the amount of barbs that litter basically every song on their second album, but the oozy, glistening trap, nihilistic electro house and sing-songy vocals are just aloof enough to support the pose. Plus, they’re funny. “Pandemic and recession,” they sing on Bitches Pt 2. “But the dumb bitch economy is booming.”

I've never heard of this pair and the description above isn't exactly helping - I feel I might like it, but I may be completely off!

Hmm - it's kinda pissed-off baby-voice lyrics over shimmery/dancey backing tracks. Does that help? It was certainly different, but a whole album was a bit too much - even at only 24 minutes long. I also certainly wasn't expecting to hear a version of Crosby, Stills & Nash's "Our House" on there. All in all, a bit odd.

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry on the album but there is one for the ladies - apparently they've been making music together for ten years, although this is only their second album. There's not an awful lot else on there with no word on critical or commercial response, but I was tickled to see that they've put a track out with Clairo. 

"Customers also listened to" Popstar Benny, Rosemary Fairweather, Alex Sloane and Triathalon - oh yeah, them. I didn't hate this, but I was somewhat thrown by its oddness and whilst some of the music was OK, it didn't feel like a great amount of skill was involved so I'm not sure what all the fuss is about.

This round is an easy win for Vampire Weekend for me - I really must remember to listen to it again some time.

#38-36 - Two decent albums and one very odd one
#32-30 - Three understated offerings