Vampire Weekend
– Father of the Bride
You can hear the sunlight on this one, even when it’s lying to you. Father of the Bride is Vampire Weekend’s most sprawling, most conflicted, and weirdest offering yet—an indie pop daydream that filters neurosis through West Coast optimism and the occasional Grateful Dead nod. Gone are the days of tightly-wound Ivy League baroque pop. This is Ezra Koenig letting the seams show.
Best of…
Clocking in at 18 tracks, the album plays like a flipbook of millennial contradiction. Existential dread wearing pastels. It’s polite in delivery but quietly freaked out under the surface. Koenig’s songwriting has always toyed with dualities, but now he’s gotten looser, more elliptical. There’s a yearning for connection buried under all the sunny melodies and studio polish. He’s singing about love, faith, and ruin—but casually, like he’s recounting it all from a rooftop in Laurel Canyon with a green juice in hand.
The production is wide open. Ariel Rechtshaid helps stretch things out with space and strange choices that somehow click. Danielle Haim’s recurring vocal turns work like a mirror for Ezra—sometimes a duet, sometimes an echo, sometimes a ghost. This album doesn’t rush. It meanders, pivots, wanders into jam-band territory, and pulls back with a wink. That kind of risk doesn’t always land, but when it does, it’s like catching a strange breeze in mid-July and realizing you’re totally lost—but happy about it.
Choice Tracks
Harmony Hall
Jangly, deceptively sweet, and full of dread. One of the best things they’ve ever done. The piano loop skips along while Ezra throws out lines about snakes, forgiveness, and self-sabotage. A sing-along for people who know better but do it anyway.
This Life
A bouncy existential crisis dressed up as a road trip song. Ezra sounds almost cheerful as he wonders if love is real or just another dead-end. It’s pop with a smirk and a wince.
Unbearably White
Don’t let the title fool you—it’s not just a meta joke. It’s a beautifully cold track, emotionally detached but achingly honest. The arrangements shimmer like frost. You can almost see your breath.
Jerusalem, New York, Berlin
Sparse and solemn. This one creeps up on you. Political, personal, spiritual—all circling the drain in under four minutes. Ezra lets the silence hang like guilt in a cathedral.
Stranger
An underrated gem. It starts with the feel of a light breeze and ends like a full-on gust. One of the album’s many relationship songs, but this one sticks because it doesn’t try to explain the mess—it just lives in it.
Father of the Bride isn’t neat. It’s not trying to be. It’s a fractured postcard from someone who’s still figuring it all out. And the beauty is, so are we.