Vampire Weekend burst onto the indie pop scene in 2008 with an afro-tinged caribbean-flavored eponymous album. Almost immediately its world pop stylings made it a critical and popular darling, at least with my friend Becca, who introduced me to the band, and with other Brooklyn hipster types and festival goers. I was charmed by smart tunes like “Oxford Comma” and “Walcott,” as were many others. We learned to tune out the haters, people who dismissed these young fellows as pretentious posers. Golly, Vampire Weekend was easy to listen to, just refreshing as all get out, like a dip in the pool on a humid day.
2010’s Contra brought more frothy fun, hip, sweet songs that my kids could enjoy with me. We played the CD in our car as we ran errands and sang along to “Horchata,” “White Sky,” and “Diplomat’s Son”. Then in 2013, Vampire Weekend released Modern Vampires of the City, another record chock full of toetappers but demonstrating depth and artistic growth as well. My toes were tapping so hard on “Unbelievers” and my head nodding so intently on “Obvious Bicycle”, the first two tracks, super catchy both of them, that I somehow didn’t pay enough attention to the second half of the album at first, however. 
But I was hooked on this third record for sure. I guess it’s saying something that I own all of their albums on CD. I actually put their discs in my CD player and listen through the tracks in order. How late 20th century old school of me! I also caught the band’s set at ACL in the fall of 2013. Terrific fun, and lead singer Ezra Koenig wore an honest-to-goodness olive drab flight suit.
But it wasn’t until this year one afternoon when I was driving on a country highway with the windows down, my eyes taking in the rolling hills and towering oil rigs that dot Central Texas, that I heard the meditative gem hidden on track #10 (out of twelve), that I really actually heard “Ya Hey” for what it was.
On my second time through “Ya Hey” that balmy afternoon, I exclaimed to the goats I was driving past, “This song is about God!” Okay, confession: I’m no Sherlock Holmes. The fourth word in the song is “Zion.” Still, I wanted a Watson to compliment my cleverness. And then I wanted to compliment the band’s cleverness on its title selection, a reverse riff on one of the most gigantic hits of the first decade of this century (what did we all agree to call that decade? I didn’t get the memo and am still not sure. No one seems to like it when I saw “the aughts”), “Hey Ya” by OutKast.
I listened to the Vampire Weekend song again. The title “Ya Hey” isn’t just an allusion to that wildly popular tune by Andre 3000, but it’s an allusion to “Yahweh,” a Hebrew name for God, I grasped. I’m a quick study, yep.
Hmm. Zion? Babylon? Well, Ezra Koenig is Jewish, I remembered.
“Wait!” I said, but only to the goats, “this album is littered with references to faith, doubt, and religious searching, including both “Unbelievers” and “Everlasting Arms.”” So no surprise that the band included this more mature kind of song on Modern Vampires of the City.
I suddenly felt a measure of satisfaction, not unlike when I choose a healthy snack like celery sticks and hummus instead of cheetos and ranch paste at a party. This breezy fluffy pop had a not so hidden layer of spirituality that counteracted the band’s typical cheeriness impressively. Salt on a chocolate chip cookie. Savory and sweet. The singer is speaking frankly and critically to God, it should be noted. The singer is frustrated by God’s seeming aloofness and puzzled by God’s continued professions of love in the face of waning faith by nearly everyone, including the singer: “The faithless they don’t love you / the zealous hearts don’t love you,” he sings. And in this frank manner of address between the singer and his God, I was reminded of the ancient wrestling of Jacob and the angel, a story and archetype that I love.
The more I listened, the more touched I was by the thoughtfulness of this lovely song. When this singer, Koenig, plaintively notes that God does not give a name to his followers, “Only I am that I am,” I swallowed hard. Yes, this emotional reaction to a pop song was a good bit of me fangirling remembered scenes in Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, a novel that made a deep impression on me as a young person, especially with regards to the necessity of serious study of religious texts. I can summon Danny and Reuven’s conversations quite easily, and did summon them as I listened to this song yet again that afternoon.
Note: I had to check the liner notes to understand that Koenig was singing “ut deo” during some of the chorus – and had to use my smart phone when I stopped to take pictures of those goats I drove past to figure out the English translation of the Latin words: “to God.” And I was glad I checked.
So kudos a year and a half later to this talented band for making bubblegum pop that doesn’t lose its flavor!
Oh, sweet thing
Zion doesn’t love you
And Babylon don’t love you
But you love everything
Oh, you saint
America don’t love you
So I could never love you
In spite of everything
In the dark of this place
There’s the glow of your face
There’s the dust on the screen
Of this broken machine
And I can’t help but feel
That I’ve made some mistake
But I let it go Ya Hey [x3]
Through the fire and through the flames (ya hey / Ut Deo)
You won’t even say your name (ya hey / Ut Deo)
Through the fire and through the flames
You won’t even say your name
Only “I am that I am”
But who could ever live that way? (ya hey / Ut Deo)
Oh, the motherland don’t love you
The fatherland don’t love you
So why love anything?
Oh, good God
The faithless they don’t love you
The zealous hearts don’t love you
And that’s not gonna change
All the cameras and files
All the paranoid styles
All the tension and fear
Of a secret career
And I think in your heart
That you’ve seen the mistake
But you let it go Ya Hey [x3]
Through the fire and through the flames (ya hey / Ut Deo)
You won’t even say your name (ya hey / Ut Deo)
Through the fire and through the flames
You won’t even say your name
Only “I am that I am”
But who could ever live that way? (ya hey / Ut Deo)
Outside the tents, on the festival grounds
As the air began to cool, and the sun went down
My soul swooned, as I faintly heard the sound
Of you spinning “Israelites”
Into “19th Nervous Breakdown”
Through the fire and through the flames (ya hey / Ut Deo)
You won’t even say your name (ya hey / Ut Deo)
Through the fire and through the flames
You won’t even say your name
Only “I am that I am”
But who could ever live that way? (ya hey / Ut Deo)