Vampire Weekend’s New Album Goes Underground and All Over

Popcast

The New York Times

Music Interviews, Music Commentary, Music

3.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 17 April 2024

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Digging into “Only God Was Above Us,” an LP that’s both catchy and complex. Guest host: Jon Pareles. Guests: The New Yorker's Amanda Petrusich and Pitchfork's Matthew Strauss.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to
0:07.0	podcast, New York Times Water Tunnel Number 3 of Music news and criticism.
0:13.6	I'm John Perreles.
0:14.6	I'm sitting in for John Caramanica.
0:16.9	And today we are going to talk about
0:19.4	the wonderful new Vampire Weekend record,
0:22.2	only God was above us.
0:24.0	I have with me two excellent critics, Amanda Petrucich, Staff Rider from the New Yorker,
0:38.9	Matthew Strauss, deputy managing editor at Pitchfork, all of us have like plunged into Vampire Weekend
0:46.0	LORE, gone down the rabbit holes, and probably have a lot of things we had to
0:51.2	cut out of our reviews because there are too many rabbit holes.
0:55.2	So Amanda let me ask you first.
0:56.8	What was your first reaction when you heard the record?
0:59.8	I'm very happy to be here with you guys by the way excellent vampire crew feels good.
1:04.4	I loved the record on first listen.
1:06.7	Vampire Weekend for me is almost always like a very urgent and immediate band.
1:11.7	I don't think they're necessarily a band that takes like multiple like it hits
1:15.1	fast which is part of the thrill of them I think that the songs are really hooky I liked
1:19.9	I liked the kind of looseness of the writing here. I thought the lyrics were incredibly
1:24.4	incisive and sharp and idiosyncratic and precise. I immediately had a million
1:28.9	stories in my head. I had a million melodies in my head. so for me it worked really fast.
1:33.0	Matthew's fast acting?
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -344 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New York Times, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The New York Times and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.