“Fuck the world. » The new Vampire Weekend album begins with these words. Ice Cream Pianothe disc’s opening piece, begins with a guitar-piano-vocal fuzzy which electrifies halfway, giving way to an instrumental explosion. The New York band is back after five years and from the start of listening to this new record, we reconnect with its pressing and galvanizing rock. On the chorus, the lyrics “I scream piano” bring us back to the title, a play on words which softens the subject of this song with virulent lyrics. “I scream piano”, sings Ezra Koenig, as if to demonstrate a discomfort with the world where he navigates better thanks to music, which he observes and accepts better thanks to his songs.
The Kœnig troupe does what it does best here. It offers a frank melancholic aesthetic, depicted by complex, melodic instrumentation. The lyrics are as catchy as they are intimate, a combination often difficult to achieve. Introspection meets observation, while a despair in the face of the world clearly emerges in the singer’s words.
But rather than a frank criticism, we see rather an acceptance of what it is to exist in this world and a more mature position than ever. As he sang in 2010: “Every dollar counts / And every morning hurts / We mostly work to live/Until we live to work”, on the magnificent and accusatory Run from the popular record Contrathe intimate leader rather: “There’s no one left to criticize / I hope you let it go / The enemy’s invicible / I hope you let it go”, on the astonishing ballad Hopelast song ofOnly God Was Above Us.
The single appeared a little before the release of the record, Capricorn, is a key moment of the album. A song where we feel all the heaviness of the chorus, accentuated by the heavy synthesizers, while the verses occasionally soften the whole. As if to really calm the listening afterwards, the conclusion of the piece is entirely acoustic. This structure is representative of the entire album, where gloom and the glow that stubbornly opposes it coexist.
On Connect, later, the frantic drum beat takes the form of a piano solo after the first few minutes, making the end of the song a whole other thing. Vampire Weekend metamorphoses throughout its songs, its tones sometimes becoming theatrical and dramatic, other times fiery, or then enveloping in grace.
Mature and elegant, without lacking the grip of the group’s signature alternative rock, but with an imposing melodic complexity, this fifth album from Vampire Weekend demonstrates a new facet of the group while satisfying all the expectations we have. about her.
Extract of Capricorn
Alternative rock
Only God Was Above Us
Vampire Weekend
Columbia Records