Vampire Weekend Exhale: ‘Father of the Bride’ Sprawls, and Mostly Earns It

Father of the Bride is Vampire Weekend’s fourth album, an 18-track, 58-minute sprawl that trades the tight, clipped songs of their first three records for something looser and warmer. Pitchfork described the record as “a looser, broader album than Modern Vampires, the great sigh after a long holding of breath.” It is the sound of a band exhaling after a long pause. The record wants to be both familiar and new: the same collegiate wit, now wrapped in country guitars, gospel choirs, and pop hooks that wander instead of snap.

Harmony Hall and the Opening Stretch

The album opens with “Hold You Now,” a duet that sets the tone: unhurried, conversational, a little strange. Then comes “Harmony Hall,” the first single and the album’s centerpiece — a piano line that feels like a memory, with vocals that turn inward and outward at once. It is the best song here, and one of the best the band has ever written.

“Bambina” is a 1:43 burst of noise and menace, a quick shake before “This Life” settles into a sunny, self-lacerating love song. “Big Blue” is a gentle instrumental interlude, and “How Long?” rides a gospel choir into a question the band never answers. “Unbearably White” is the quiet heart of the record, a slow, aching ballad about trying to keep things clean.

The Middle, Where It Drags

The middle of the album is where the sprawl shows. “Rich Man” is a slight, pleasant joke that overstays its two and a half minutes. “Married in a Gold Rush” pairs two voices in a country swing that feels borrowed rather than earned. “My Mistake” and “Sympathy” both work — the former a wry confession, the latter a taut, driving track — but they sit in a stretch that lacks the spark of the opening.

Sunflower and the Final Run

“Sunflower” is the second great moment, a bright, propulsive song with a guitar line that could have been a single on any earlier Vampire Weekend record. “Flower Moon” is a strange detour, all organs and wandering melody, and “2021” is a 1:39 hushed, half-sung snippet that feels like a sketch more than a song.

We Belong Together and the Closer

“We Belong Together” is the album’s thesis: a love song that admits doubt, wrapped in the band’s most direct pop arrangement in years. “Stranger” is darker, a night-drive song with a nagging guitar line, and “Spring Snow” returns to the gentle balladry of “Unbearably White.” The closer, “Jerusalem, New York, Berlin,” is a quiet, half-spoken meditation on identity and place — an odd ending, but a fitting one.

What the Critics Said

Father of the Bride is messy. It is overlong, and it lacks the sharp brevity of the band’s first trilogy of albums. But it is also smart, witty, and comforting. Metacritic’s aggregate score of 82/100 anchors the critical consensus. The Observer said the album “exudes warmth and no little sonic familiarity, while reflecting what is a radically altered set-up.”

The risk was that the looseness would read as laziness.

It does not. The genre-hopping holds together because the songwriting holds together, and the best tracks here — “Harmony Hall,” “Sunflower,” “This Life,” “Sympathy,” “Unbearably White,” “We Belong Together” — stand with anything the band has released. The lesser songs are padding, but they are pleasant padding, and the record’s confidence carries them.

This is a band that waited and came back with an 18-track album that asks you to sit with it. You should.

2019 albums · album review · Father of the Bride · indie rock · Vampire Weekend