Father of the Bride is the fourth studio album by American indie rock band Vampire Weekend. It was released on May 3, 2019, by Columbia Records, as their first album on a major label.

The release marked the band's first project in nearly six years, following Modern Vampires of the City (2013), and the group's first project since multi-instrumentalist and producer Rostam Batmanglij's departure from the group. It was primarily produced by Modern Vampires of the City collaborator Ariel Rechtshaid and lead singer Ezra Koenig, and features numerous external collaborators, including Danielle Haim, Steve Lacy, Dave Macklovitch of Chromeo, DJ Dahi, Sam Gendel, BloodPop, and Batmanglij. The pop and indie rock album is musically diverse and heavily referential, contrasting heavy and direct lyrics against a bright spring-time musical mood, with its wide range of influences including country music and jam bands.

The album was preceded by three double singles: "Harmony Hall" / "2021", "Sunflower" / "Big Blue" and "This Life" / "Unbearably White". Upon release, it received widespread acclaim from music critics, earning the band their second Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album as well as their first nomination for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It was also a commercial success, becoming the group's third consecutive album to debut at number one on the US Billboard 200. The band promoted the album with a global tour, featuring an expanded seven-person lineup.

Background and recording In May 2013, the band released Modern Vampires of the City to critical and commercial success, winning the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. The album was promoted with a world tour, which concluded in September 2014. Tired from the tour, the band took a break from writing and recording. During this period, Koenig created the animated television series Neo Yokio and co-wrote and produced "Hold Up" from Beyoncé's Lemonade. He also gradually relocated from New York City to Los Angeles.

On January 26, 2016, Rostam Batmanglij announced his departure from the band via Twitter, emphasizing that he and Koenig would continue to collaborate. Later the same day, Koenig announced that Vampire Weekend had begun working on their fourth album, under the working title Mitsubishi Macchiato, with Batmanglij contributing to the record. In November 2016 it was reported that the group had signed to Columbia Records, marking their departure from XL Recordings. During 2016 Koenig spent time writing the album and researching in libraries with grad students. In March 2017, he said the album would feature a "spring-time" vibe and at the time consisted of songs entitled "Flower Moon" and "Conversation".

The album was primarily recorded in producer Ariel Rechtshaid's home studio in Silver Lake, Los Angeles – dubbed Effie Street Studios – as well as Vox Studios in Hollywood and Sony Music Studios in Tokyo. This led to numerous collaborations with Rechtshaid's then-girlfriend Danielle Haim. In September 2017 Koenig said the album was "about 80% done". Batmanglij was involved in the album, and in a December interview Koenig noted that their method of partnership had not changed despite Batmanglij's departure from the band.

On the other hand, Koenig's remaining Vampire Weekend bandmates, bassist Chris Baio and drummer Chris Tomson, were not involved in the album. In 2024 Koenig would state that the album was made with "them having some confidence in me to take us somewhere interesting, and me having confidence that they’d be down to kind of wait and still be a part of it."

Koenig also stated that working with Kanye West had inspired him to include a wider variety of musicians on the album, and that his songwriting for the album had been influenced by country singer Kacey Musgraves. On the influence he said, "I'm the type of person who has spent hours poring over the avant-garde poetic lyrics of certain songwriters, and there was something that felt so good [about how] from the first verse, you knew who was singing, who they were singing to, what kind of situation they were in", noting that this hadn't applied to many Vampire Weekend songs. On August 4, 2018, Koenig announced that the album had been completed.

Music and lyrics The pop and indie rock album is heavily referential both lyrically and musically, channeling a springtime mood despite its "encyclopedic" density. It explores a broader musical palette than past releases by the band, and contrasts warm, pleasant music against heavy and dark lyrics. Key musical styles explored throughout the album include R&B, soul, country, folk, rock, art pop and baroque pop. The double album's wide range of musical styles has been compared to the Beatles' White Album (1968), although Koenig considers the album closer to more thematically cohesive double albums such as Bruce Springsteen's The River (1980) and Paolo Conte's Aguaplano (1987). The loose style of the album has been compared to jam bands such as The Grateful Dead and Phish. It has also been described as more American than the group's earlier work, with Koenig's voice and guitar both adapting a roots twang, and songs channeling the Great American Songbook.

The album's lyrical style is more direct and straightforward than Koenig's previous writing, inspired by American country singer Kacey Musgraves. Themes explored on the album include lost youth, romantic downfall, political strife, uncertainty, doom, complacency, environmentalism, and existentialism, with an eventual arc towards redemption and rebirth. Weddings and churches act as recurring motifs exploring love, and the album frequently features biblical imagery. Koenig considers the album to be more lyrically cohesive than previous work, stating: "the genres, maybe, and the references go all over the place but I actually think lyrically it's one of the most unified [Vampire Weekend] albums".

Songs

"Hold You Now" has been described by The Times as "a gorgeous, folky opener". It contains a sample from Hans Zimmer's choral score for The Thin Red Line. It is the first of three duets with Danielle Haim on the album, and its simple lyrics feature Koenig and Haim trading verses about seizing the moment in a relationship. Koenig described these duets as the album's "tentpoles", taking inspiration from country duets by Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn. He chose to open the album with sparse vocals and acoustic guitar because he thought it was a "weird way to open a Vampire Weekend record". "Harmony Hall" features warm and joyful music, with a "springtime" mood, and has been compared musically to the Grateful Dead's "Touch of Grey" (1987). Influences from rave, baggy and Madchester music from 1990s England, such as "Unbelievable" by EMF, are also evident in its piano and beat, with Baroque elements in its bridge. The "buoyant" music is juxtaposed against dark lyrics, with the track interpolating the line "I don't wanna live like this, but I don't wanna die" from "Finger Back" on the band's previous album Modern Vampires of the City (2013). The brief and eclectic "Bambina", inspired by Couperin's Les Barricades Mystérieuses, features vocoder and "crunchy" guitars. The musically bright and upbeat "This Life" contains handclaps and lively guitars, with Koenig's lyrics exploring "spiritual uncertainty" with levity, interpolating the line "You've been cheating on, cheating on me / I’ve been cheating on, cheating on you" from "Tonight" by American rapper iLoveMakonnen. It has been musically compared to "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison (1967). "Big Blue" ambiguously explores religious and cosmic uncertainty, with the concise track including ambient arpeggios, sporadic drum samples, "flowery" harmonies, a choir and detuned guitar riffs as it builds dynamically. Its sparse electronic backdrop has been compared to the music on Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak (2008), while its "weeping" guitar style has been compared to the works of George Harrison.

The "lurching" art pop of "How Long?" contrasts jovial and funky keyboards, sound effects, harmonies and guitars against dark and bitter lyrics about the potential demise of Los Angeles. Writing the song, Koenig was inspired by both hip hop and alternative rock from the 1990s. "Unbearably White" is a "colorful" art pop song, which develops to incorporate isolated vocals, handbells, jazz fusion-inspired bass guitar, and orchestral surges, and lyrically discusses a failing relationship. Despite the title's allusion to criticisms of the band, the track does not primarily explore race. The cryptic "Rich Man" samples palm-wine guitarist S. E. Rogie, and features lush strings, with Koenig "crooning" about romance, wealth and ratios. Koenig began writing the song at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards where the group won Best Alternative Music Album for Modern Vampires of the City. "Married in a Gold Rush" is a "lush" country song, and the second on the album to feature Danielle Haim.

The regretful and moody "My Mistake" incorporates jazz, lounge and experimentalism, featuring "watery" sampled field sounds. The freak folk and flamenco song "Sympathy" contains influences from Schaffel techno, rave, and English rock band New Order. It has been described as "one of the band's most bonkers tracks to date", while Koenig has characterized it as "the most metal Vampire Weekend's ever gotten". The unorthodox and psychedelic "Sunflower" opens with guitar, bass and scatted vocal runs in unison, reminiscent of prog, with its chorus shifting to warm soul-pop. It features abstract lyrics and channels the musical palette of the 1970s, with Koenig comparing the track to the music of Phish. The track features the Internet singer and guitarist Steve Lacy, who also contributed to companion track "Flower Moon", which has been described as an auto-tuned chorale, in the style of the Beach Boys and music from Soweto. "2021" is a minimal and romantic ballad, built around a sample of ambient track "Talking", composed in the 1980s by Haruomi Hosono for Japanese retail company Muji. It features a soft pulsing synthesizer and fingerpicked guitars, along with a distorted vocal sample of the word "boy" sung by Jenny Lewis.

The anthemic and extravagant "We Belong Together" is the third and final duet with Haim, and has been compared to "Mull of Kintyre" (1977) by Wings and the production work of Kanye West. The track incorporates an early demo recorded by Koenig and Rostam Batmanglij at Martha's Vineyard in April 2012, as well as a separate idea Koenig wrote at a piano; Koenig has described it as potentially the band's most "wholesome" song. "Stranger" explores domesticity, musically incorporating saxophones into its relaxed groove. The song's lyric "things have never been stranger; things are gonna stay strange" has been widely highlighted as a microcosm of the album's core message. Koenig has said that the song explores "when you're in a house and you hear other people having a good time and you don't feel left out because you have a sense of belonging". The in media res narrative of "Spring Snow" laments a farewell to a lover, depicting harsh rays of sunglight and heavy snow against a musical backdrop of chamber pop with a Latin groove. The "sad" album closer "Jerusalem, New York, Berlin" references the Balfour Declaration, and has musically been compared to the works of Scottish electronic musician Sophie. Koenig chose the three titular cities for their significance to the Jewish people, in order to explore the "struggle of identity". He also found significance in what the three cities represented more broadly, with Jerusalem signifying religion, New York signifying money and Berlin signifying culture.