Ezra Koenig stands back-lit and hand-in-pocket. Like the rest of Vampire Weekend, he’s dressed in an all-white get up that falls somewhere between preppy and prison-wear. “What’s up, Manchester?” he asks tentatively, and the Sunday evening crowd cheers tentatively back.
Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut was released in 2008: a neat and pleasant album full of Afropop-influenced songs sung by a similarly neat and pleasant frontman. Now, on fifth album Only God Was Above Us released earlier this year, Koenig’s lyrics are more jaded: “Each generation makes its own apology,” he sings on Gen-X Cop s, the previous lilt in his voice now gone.
This Life, from their 2019 record Father of the Bride, is the first to get people really moving, helped along by strobes and the band’s Elvis Costello-style kneejerks. Throughout the night they are assisted on stage by a varied ensemble: a violinist, a saxophonist, a cowboy-attired dancer and multiple others in hi-vis jackets. Sometimes they make up for an otherwise relatively low-key performance – the violinist steals the show on Sunflower – but at others they only serve to add to the somewhat scattered feel of the evening.
The band whip out the high-tempo Cousins and A-Punk at the halfway mark, and the audience are thrilled, though they seem to bounce out the remains of their energy. Koenig and band follow this with what is billed as Cocaine Cowboys – a 10 minute-plus medley of cosmic country tracks by them, the Grateful Dead and others – which falls rather flat. “It’s really stopped feeling like a Sunday night,” Koenig says half hopefully. “Thursday night?”
The gig has been marketed as An Evening With Vampire Weekend: a two-hour show with the band playing their hits alongside B-sides, those country covers, and crowd requests which, it turns out, haven’t quite been finessed. “Is this the best part of the show or the worst part of the show?” Koenig asks after giving up halfway through a cover of Common People. After other 30-second snippets of Sweet Jane, Last Nite and more, Koenig promises he’ll learn the songs properly for next time.
“Well, that was the show,” says Koenig, before questioning the audience on whether they liked it. The overwhelming answer is “yes”: Vampire Weekend have succeeded in sustaining and evolving their sound through nearly two decades of albums and more than two hours of unconventional performance, though there are mixed results when they push beyond their own crowd-pleasers.
