The groovy aesthetic reads as a homecoming of sorts. In the three addictive albums they released from 2008 to 2013, Vampire Weekend captured the very particular perspective of an overeducated American male growing up in a globalized age. Koenig’s characters made pilgrimages to Dharamsala on spring break and spent December drinking horchata, all the while streaming Fela Kuti compilations, Fleetwood Mac B sides, and hyphy mixtapes. On densely allusive and yet miraculously light-feeling pop songs, hyperconnected 20-somethings wrangled, in their neurotic way, with universal concerns: love, God, punctuation. “I’m ready for the house,” Koenig sighed on 2013’s wearily beautiful Modern Vampires of the City, seeming to yearn to settle down.

In the six years since then, the singer has explored other creative outlets (creating a Netflix anime; podcasting; writing a hook for Beyoncé), lost a bandmate (the keyboardist and songwriter Rostam Batmanglij quit amicably), and had a child with his partner, Rashida Jones. These changes feel intrinsic to Father of the Bride, which is shaggier, grander, brasher, and yet more ambivalent than any previous Vampire Weekend album. With 18 ornate and overwhelming songs, it gives the feeling of sorting through a fabulously cluttered garage, which befits Koenig taking on 30-something-dad concerns: family, the planet, and the connection between the two.

The album kicks off with a wedding. On “Hold You Now,” Koenig and Danielle Haim of Haim play a groom and bride considering splitting up rather than walking down the aisle. The gentle-voiced singers trade verses twice more over the course of the album, and each time it evokes classic country-couple banter (Koenig has said he was thinking of George Jones and Tammy Wynette). But each time, there’s also a strange sonic twist. For “Hold You Now,” it’s a chanting choir sampled from Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack for the 1998 World War II epic The Thin Red Line, conveying not only sanctity, but also apocalyptic stakes. “Why’s your heart grown heavy, boy, when things were feeling light?” Haim asks. “Turning this June morning into some dark judgment night.”

That question—how can dark exist in brightness?—recurs throughout. Amid the PLUR-rave vibes of the lead single, “Harmony Hall,” Koenig laments “wicked snakes inside a place you thought was dignified.” The mischievous bass line and kooky bwoings of “How Long?” are like a laugh track as Koenig sings of heartbreak at midnight Mass. Accompanied by a cha-cha metronome, “Spring Snow” tells of a freak storm enabling a bonus night of cuddling. It ends, “Here comes the sun / Those toxic old rays.” On Father of the Bride, makeups are breakups, givers are takers, and love means leaving.

The double-edged motif well suits anxieties about humankind’s self-endangerment from climate change and war. The finale, “Jerusalem, New York, Berlin,” concludes with what could be a warning about the West’s recent fascist tingles: “Let them win the battle / But don’t let them restart that genocidal feeling that beats in every heart.” Yet Koenig’s more interested in drawing connections—metaphorical and literal at once—between personal and global serenity. He’s realized bliss is a gift that expires.