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‘When I was younger I was arrogant’: Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig on fatherhood and growing up

They were initially dismissed as the acme of upper-class preppiness, but the band’s new album Only God Was Above Us is its grittiest yet. Has their frontman finally exorcised past demons?

It’s a tightrope walk that’s spilled into Only God Was Above Us, which dips back into the genteel trappings of early Vampire Weekend records – richly orchestrated with lush, ambling upright bass, dizzying sax solos and cascading piano lines – but manages to sound vastly different to anything the band have done before. In 2018, he and his wife, the actor Rashida Jones, had a baby; after touring the album, he spent time living in Tokyo and London, in addition to their home base of Los Angeles, while she worked on film projects, grateful to let his life contract a little after the circus of promoting a record. Photograph: Rosaline Shahnavaz/The Guardian“Living in these different places superficially gives the record a glamorous touch, but when you’re moving abroad with your family, and your wife is working 14 hours a day, and your kid is in school, there’s also a lot of solitude,” he says.

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