Vampire Weekend
713 Music Hall
June 6, 2024
Surrounded by screaming fans, two things were pretty clear to me last night. Many people love Vampire Weekend. I just don’t happen to be one of them.
Oh, calm down. The boys from Columbia University aren’t inherently offensive. In fact, I bet a friend of mine the fresh faced lads would come out on stage in chinos and button-downs, and the only disappointment was my friend’s unwillingness to pay up. The band members themselves would also tell you that inscrutability is often the point, so if that’s your bag, good on ya.
Lead singer Ezra Koenig remarked that this was the band’s first time in Houston in five years. he also endeared himself to the crowd by telling us this was the first “proper night of the tour,” as most of their previous dates were festival appearances. The comments led into “Capricorn,” from VW’s latest (Only God Was Above Us). They did open with “Mansard Roof” from their self-titled debut album, though all five official releases were fairly well-represented.
The band has expanded from the three (or four, depending on how you factor in the departed Rostam Batmanglij’s ongoing involvement) to a seven-piece touring ensemble, replete with two percussionists, two keyboard players, and an interpretive dancer that I’m 90 percent sure I didn’t hallucinate.
“But what does Vampire Weekend sound like?” It’s a complicated question, for while Koenig, bassist Chris Baio, and drummer Chris Tomson are accomplished musicians, their songs traverse a spectrum from inoffensive worldbeat pop to mid-Atlantic ska to an aesthetic best described as “jam band for suburbanites.”
In short, if Graceland is your favorite Paul Simon album, you’ll be right at home with VW’s — let’s charitably call them “borrowed” — aural stylings. You can’t find fault with the band’s technical skills, even if the most well-received tunes (“Mansard Roof,” “Oxford Comma,” “Unbelievers”) are conspicuously from the era when producer and multi-instrumentalist Batmanglij was still with the group. He left in 2016, and while still a contributor, they’re clearly not the same without him.
Whatever genre you feel like slotting them into, the band certainly doesn’t lack for devotees. At 713 last night, you had neo-hippies dancing in the few open spaces, aging hipsters trying to throw everyone off with their Radiohead T-shirts, and families just in from Junior’s soccer practice. And the group acknowledged early criticisms, playing “Unbearably White” from 2019’s Father of the Bride.
They performed in front of a backdrop that was either a subway tunnel or a set photo from Escape from the Planet of the Apes (I couldn’t work my way close to the stage). That is, until it was (briefly) a giant blowup of a photograph of some mustachioed friend of theirs staring at the recent solar eclipse. Koenig apparently took special meaning from the way the clouds parted (in Austin) just in time for the event. Cloudy Houston thumbs it’s nose in your direction, sir.
And there were undeniable moments the audience ate up: a first-time in concert “Mary Boone” segueing into “Hannah Hunt;” the band members fading out during show closer “Hope;” and the all-request encore, which teased “Pizza Party” (from VW’s previous incarnation, L’Homme Run) before performing “1901” by Phoenix, “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House, and “Wonderwall” by Oasis.
Vampire Weekend are quite good at what they do, and the adoring crowd at 713 Music Hall last night ate it up. How emphatically that resonates with you probably depends on your tolerance for how often Koenig’s introspective lyrics are masked by faders or noise. It’s a feature, not a bug, and you have to give them credit, because they truly don’t care if you “get it” or not.
Personal Bias: Is this where I say how boring it would be if everyone likes the same things?
The Crowd: People too late for the Deadhead experience but who still remember the Golden Age of Popped Collars.
Overheard In The Crowd: Nothing specific, but Vampire Weekend may be the perfect musical act for Houston: nobody in the main body of the audience stopped talking at any point, and — more importantly — no one else seemed to care.
Random Notebook Dump: “Imagine Dream of the Blue Turtles,” but somehow less funky.
SET LIST
Mansard Roof
Holiday
Ice Cream Piano
Classical
Capricorn
Connect
Prep-School Gangsters
White Sky
Unbelievers
This Life
Sunflower
2021
Unbearably White
Flower Moon
Campus
Oxford Comma
Gen-X Cops
Diane Young
Cousins
A-Punk
Mary Boone
Hannah Hunt
Harmony Hall
Hope
ENCORE
1901 (Phoenix cover)
Don’t Dream It’s Over (Crowded House cover)
Wonderwall (Oasis cover)
Walcott
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
