AUGUST ALBUM: Only God Was Above Us - Vampire Weekend (Patreon)

.

""""""

------------

{{{[[[[[[------]]]]]]}}}}

=======

When I post the album/movie of the month, I'm anticipating some people have listened through the album / watched the movie in advance, AND I ALSO know some people will see the post and go oh! I wanna do that! & they will take the cue to listen album over this week and comment in the coming days. The reflections and responses will probably also inspire some of you to go back and re-experience the album/film, and then you can come back and comment AGAIN or REPLy to ppl.

The point bein the album/movie of the month threads will be active over the course of the week that they are posted!

NOTE: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO WRITE AS MUCH AS ME. FOCUS ON WHAT YOU WANT TO FOCUS ON. QUALITY oVER QUANTity. I JUST HAVE SO mANY FEELINGS ABOUT ALBUMS.

=======

+++++++

&&&&&&

<.>...<.>

/

HUMBLE BEFORE GOD IN NEW YORK CITY

The voice of this album is incredibly existentially comforting to me. An patient voice letting me down gently, sympathizing with my desire to be, special and how far I am from being anything more than a human being.

The eclectic genre bending controlled chaos sounds like the streets of New York, drum kits sounding like a mix between hip hop soul sampling and street bands echoing down alleyways. A real anxious frenetic energy to this, as jubilant as it is I feel on the brink of panic with it sometimes. So much from so many directions, so relentless, so many lyrics announcing my inherent inadequacy. Ah!!!! If hip hop makes me feel like I can rule the world sometimes, this album makes me feel like nothing will ever change and I need to humble myself before the incomprehensible immensity of the city.

Coping with insignificance while living tantilizingly close to significance.

What's more New York than that? And what more religious?

To look up at God and realize you are not God, you're not in control, you will be at the whims of the fate and destiny and society like everyone else. Feeling that screaming mortal urge to judge the world and change it to your liking, and feeling the undying frustration that you can't truly change anything.

However it doesn't feel cynical. Not in the slightest. It feels like growing up. It feels like maturity, letting go of that Death Instinct and finding peace in this lifetime.

Makes me think of some of my friends. Makes me want to hold their hand and tell them to let it go. Give up. It's okay. We can just be human. You don't have to win. We can just live, no more or less special than anyone else. No expectations, no big war, no revolutionary contribution. Just human.

.

Lots of text below, all 10 tracks. s'why i'm uploading late. had to cut it down, rethink my life etc.

I will be very happy to read your things this week + go back and relisten hearing what you heard.

x

::::::: :::::::: ::::::: :::::::

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

      ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

>>.>/////>>..../////>..>..>..

1. ICE CREAM PIANO

You're the soldier, I'm policeListen baby, we can't deny itYou don't want to win this war, 'cause you don't want the peace

Immediately establishing this dynamic between the narrator and the character that he is speaking to. The narrator, someone who has given up, who is softly at peace, wanting to share that peace with this friend who is still incredibly hung up on FIGHTING and WINNING

In dreams, I scream piano, I softly reach the high noteThe world don't recognize a singer who won't sing

Man........ you know when you try to scream or run in dreams and its all thick suffocated silenced slow motion? Sometimes making my dreams comes through feels like that.

Hopeless combat, one who is furious at the state of the world and takes this as reason not to engage with the world. I've met u......

This song is so triumphant, so much fanfare, but it also feels like it's almost falling apart, so anxiety inducing and exhausting and intense. When I listen in public my heart rate quickens, I feel a little out of control. Too much happy!!! Traces of eeeeEEEEEEEEEE

.................

2. CLASSICAL

Untrue, unkind and unnaturalHow the cruel, with time, becomes classical

put on your Bordieu and Veblen hats

.... this song really makes me think about the research I've been doing recently on fashion and status. Particularly the writing of Derek Guy, the menswear guy on Twitter.

He writes that for better or worse, when you are talking about the aesthetics of suits on men, you are talking about our desire to emulate high status powerful rich people of the past, particularly the british aristocracy and american industrialists of the 1800s and 1900s. That is a very deeply ingrained notion of "Tastefulness" and "Classyness" for better or worse.

And it's not all worse. There is some real beauty in there that it is good to honour and good to democratize, so more people can experience and express this classyness and tastefulness and status. And we can also push the envelope, push against the social suffocation and rigid status hierarchies, challenging norms and revising them. In doing so maybe we can deconstruct the most harmful aspects while saving the most beautiful.

I know that walls fall, shacks shakeBridges burn and bodies breakIt's clear something's gonna changeAnd when it does, which classical remains?

(i dont love the riff on this one, in the way I sometimes don't like Queen songs. Big loud "classical" major key harmonies. not my culture)

.................

3. CAPRICORN

The world looked differentWhen God was on your sideI know you're tired of tryin'Listen clearly, you don't have to try

One of my favourite sogns on the album. Total peak experience of that paternal voice empathizing with how small and inadequate I feel versus how badly I want to be important and significant. I can really feel the personality and pathology of the person he is soothing and mentoring in this. The anxious anger that other people aren't trying as hard, that you aren't getting your due, that you were born before or after your time.......

The noises in the 2nd chorus are just unbelievable.

Such unnerving and enthralling angelic metalic squeals. There is almost an uncanny element to them, as they can easily be percieved as either ugly noise or gorgeous sound. They sit uncomfortably and inscrutably in between beautiful and offensive, like an anxiety attack you’re not allowed to have, or an exuberance that feels on the brink of insanity.

Sounds like an immense incomprehensible machine falling over itself as it tramples over your city. Makes me think of this one robot in Nier Automata after it dies

This trampling on your death instinct, uncaring about puny mortal desire for revenge against God

.................

4. CONNECT*

i LOVE the two part chorus, the extremely hip hop / UK Dub bit:

I know once it's lost, it's never foundI need it now

... then the return to the rattling train track band playing.

The upright bassline at 3:09 fucked my whole face off

Then the massive frantic climax that follows! A wonderful example of a climax that doesn’t require a big bass drop to provide it intensity.

I love that in the last minute they run through a bunch of the established soundscapes without lyrics so you can just appreciate them.... delicious.

elegantly wasted..... such a painting.

Ezra Koenig's lyrics so effectively tap into the feeling of being fallen, yet wanting to return to paradise. Feeling forever and feeling that you are eternally banished from it. the yearning.....

.................

5. PREP-SCHOOL GANGSTERS

soft surf rock tune about class disparity?

It seems to me to be a lot about how upper middle-class people often deny that they are upper middle class, or discriminatory or elite, but quietly they enforce their little social hierarchy. Like I take this line to be a denial of elitism even when its apparent in aphorism:

It's just somethin' people sayThey don't really feel that way

Downplaying the significance of aphorisms, then in the second verse they actually threaten you with violence for suggesting that [the aphorism] might be offensive, or revealing:

It's just somethin' people sayYou could lose some teeth that way

How bout you quit causing a disturbance with your questiosn and insinuations buddy!?

I think the chorus is about upwards mobility? Like the narrator is a lower class person who is percieving this class disparity and is moving upwards through it, still a bit bitter and resentful, got Parasite driver stink on em, can see that these exclusionary pre-school punks also have some of the stink on em somewhere, are not as different as they liek to think they are...

Call me jealous, call me madNow I got the thing you hadSomewhere in your family treeThere was someone just like me

i dont like surf rock very much though. I like moody synthy things. lik enext track

.................

6. THE SURFER*

I love this song. Every second every noise. The drums as always, incredibly & innovatively recorded and mixed, always shifting, so many unique textures.1. So gentle and simple with the ghost piano at the front, then as soon as the chords enter I am totally transported. Feels like being by the water at sunrise or sunset, all alone, on a chilly day, in the Fall. This is how my consciousness feels when I am most myself, most alone. Melancholy.

The chorus chord progression has so much inevitable momentum, just drags me all the way down to the heart of the song, with that lovely warm Gmaj7 - Bm/F# - Fmaj7 - F7 into the Em9 verse. The chords and the texture of the guitars with the organ, it's all just so precious it doesn't need anything complex, it just shines simply as it is.

Then the incredibly simple string synth afterwards.... always a sucker for scattered plucky out-of-time guitars, like on For Emma Forever Ago.....

As for the lyrics, they puzzle me and I need more time with them, but

Back on the island, Water Tunnel 3A cage ascended, someone looks like meLook up at fingers reaching into spaceA Roman soldier's spearhead jammed above the waist

Is this about Jesus? Like Jesus Christ emerging from a cage at the bottom of a New York water supply, abandoned? Reaching up to the heavens, forgotten? Like this is a failure Jesus who didn't achieve divinity and reconciliation, leaving us all damned, stranding himself in the same eternall separated place as the rest of us?

Fake fortune teller scandalized by fateBroke bodybuilder crushed beneath the weightLost and deluded trying to find your placeInept long-distance runner losing every race

Trying to Be Something but never succeeding at Being that Thing. Impassable barrier between your self identity and actualization of that identity. Uncrossable chasm between incarnation and the infinite that intended to be incarnated.

The enduring mystery of the lyrics to me is part of the enchantment. Personal favourite on album.

.................

7. GEN-X COPS

I don't love the main gtr sound on this but I get it. Alarm siren slide guitar. I just think its the slide guitar its a little too much

The insane industrial sound at 2:05 followed by the harp is emblematic of this insane production.

Completely obsessed with the piano solo at 2:50 it is perfect perfect perfect. I think I want to learn it. I think I will. It's just so clean and calm and just right.

Each generation makes its own apology

Feels like a love letter to the insufficient out of touch older generation. Realizing your own ineptitude naturally leads you to forgive your parents.

.................

8. MARY BOONE

intense religious feeling once more induced by childrens choir.

Crazy hip hop-y scream sample at 1:04. Just wonderful sounding drums.

In those days, the burning daysThe one from Queens, not from Brooklyn

I love this reference to TIME, as if TIME is a different thing depending on what geographical physical location it occurs in, rather than a fixed linear progression without spacial context. “Those days” should apply to everywhere but he refuses that frame here. The days are particular to context not some immovable clock.

I don't knwo anything about Mary Boone or what these lyrics are referring to. Tbh. Someone else research this or tell me what it is if you know.

You're the author of everythingUse this voice and let it sing

Succulent couplet. Put it on a doormat or a forehead or a mirror or a gravestone.

Also feels SARCASTIC!!!

.................

9. PRAVDA

The image of this narrator leaving the person they have been consoling because he can't wait for them any longer makes my skin crawl a bit.

Your consciousness is not my problem'Cause when I come home, it won't be home to you

This makes me mourn some of the people in my life that I can't save, can't live life for. mmmmkfkmm not my fav song bc surf rock feel but makes me tearful thinking now.

Gets SO interesting sonically at 3:15 though until the sudden cut out soon after. Love the limitless feeling of the production. ANYTHING can happen at any time.

And I hope you know your brain's not bulletproof

Thanks for reminding me of my mortality <3 :)

.................

10. HOPE*

Maybe my favourite on the album. Incredible benediction. Perfect closer.

The finality and futility doesn’t at all feel like defeatism or a death of spirit. It’s just a reframing. A wider, gentler one, that accepts that things will not become completed while we’re here. It really speaks to the ego required to be mad at reality your whole life. You can’t let your inner peace and love exist only if reality earns them from you. You can’t make your morality dependent entirely on the outcome it’s meant to generate. Maybe all your Good acts will amount to nothing. Maybe even if you’re perfect they’ll defile your name anyways. Maybe you're not special and you only get what you get.

I hope you can find peace regardless.

The signatories broke the pactThe surfer sacked the quarterbackThe bag fell down onto the tracksI hope you let it go

This is such a silly thing to bring up but there’s this Game Grumps bit that it makes me think of, when Arin sarcastically perfectly illustrates a very maladapted spiritual/psychological self conception.

“Everything in the world is against me. So if you say something’s good that means I’m less good by comparison. There’s just less Good in the world for me to have."

.

sigh. I'm thinking of one person in particular. I hope you let it go.

..........

hbu?