Vampire weekend review
This is a review of the Vampire Weekend gig at Audio Brighton in Feb 2008.
What was the performance like?
Vampire Weekend are a group of 4 college-graduates from New York who are one of several new bands to be employing Afrobeat in new music. They use electric guitars in the polyrythmic guitar-style known as soukous, showing this off to particularly good effect on ‘Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa’. Their performance was confident and exciting, with changes of pace and rhythm throughout the set. It was upbeat, summery, uplifting.
There were two very interesting dancing styles going on from Ezra the frontman (angular, jerky) and the bassist, mooching and stepping forth and back. All 4 looked comfortable on stage and were excellent musicians.
4/5
What was the sound quality like?
Good - i was at the front right next to the drummer which who was absolutely brilliant, i was watching him closely and he was changing rhythms and doing offbeats and mixing it up constantly. Lots of fast beats and military style drumming. The set was very tight, they played very tightly, guitars and cymbals stopping perfectly in time. Some of the keyboard parts didnt come through as strongly but the singing harmonies sounded great between Ezra (the frontman) and Rostram (keyboards, who apparently produced the whole album from the start).
4/5
What was the on stage banter like?
Ezra was funny, and friendly and did say a little something in between each song, chatting to the audience, telling us we had provided the best response so far this tour for the call-back song ‘Blake’s got a new face’ which went down well with the crowd. Actually there were several Brighton comments, (one about Brighton being the place for fighting on the beach - ?)
They apologised for not having many songs as they only have one album; we thought this was quite sweet, and better than playing covers or weaker/same ones. They didn’t do an encore as they felt it would be dishonest especially as we would be able to see them backstage, which we all found refreshing. So they were unpretentious, friendly and fun.
3/5
What were the audience like?
Very appreciative, lots of moshing going on in the middle, bizarrely.
3/5
Overall
Afrobeat eh? Though it did combine well with faster military beats on certain tracks such as ‘Apunk’, it can sound a little incongruous at times. Its just not something that’s been in vogue for a while. Though afrobeat is not all they play (they themselves say they don’t try to copy one particular style because if you listen to one influence too closely its hard to come up with anything new), in fact there’s reggae and ska beats on some tracks, and harpsichord and strings on ‘M79’, I wonder what they will do next to avoid sounding samey… Having said that, I think their music will appeal to a wide range of people, not just twitchy indie kids, and its quite a refreshing change to all the jaunty angular pop/rock thats around at the moment. Actually, the more i hear them more i like them. I think they would be brilliant in a festival setting, with everyone jumping around. Maybe they just need a bit of getting used to.
3/5
Hey I managed to get through the review without mentioning Paul Simon’s Graceland! D’oh…
Vampire Weekend Videos
Buy The Album
Vampire Weekend’s self-titled album is out now.
Pictures and words by Angela Jordan