Good Weather For Airstrikes

I’ve devoted more than enough text to brand new XL-signees (holler) Vampire Weekend in this space over the last eight months, so I wasn’t planning on reviewing their show last night at Music Hall of Williamsburg, but they were better than ever and the Shakes and Yeasayer turned in awesome sets as well, so yeah… here it goes. First a note about the venue, the latest addition to the Bowery Presents family. Formerly the Northsix, Bowery Presents rolled up and took over the place and made it over into what is basically an exact replica of the Bowery Ballroom, down to the last very last blueprint. That said, it’s still a great venue (…in the same way that Bowery is a great venue) and the largest Vampire Weekend has headlined to date, so it was an exciting night. But to rewind for a moment - I saw this band playing a frat party at Columbia in February and now their fetching $12 a ticket and selling out legit venues all over town? What a year it’s been.

Moving on to the actual show though, Yeasayer (think a more streamlined, less absurd Animal Collective) opened with an extremely impressive set highlighting their brilliant melodies and frontman Chris Keating’s unique vocals, all of which were underlay by a winning combination of live drums and a sample pad. I’d not had extensive exposure to them outside of single “2080″, so I wasn’t totally sure what to expect heading in, but they didn’t disappoint. Their ridiculous energy came to a climax in the final refrain of “2080″ (though I did long for that children’s choir at the end), and it was easily the best non-VW song of the night.

MP3: “2080″ - Yeasayer ((highly recommended))

I was far more familiar with the Harlem Shakes, whose Burning Birthdays EP was one of the finer debuts of 2006, though I’d never had the pleasure of seeing them live before. They were fucking fantastic - hampered only by backing vocals mic’d far too low in the mix -and even rocked a horn section comprised of brass players from Beirut and the Arcade Fire, which took some extremely exciting new material to a whole new level. Particularly awesome was a new track called “The Fucking Ocean”, which stood out alongside established gems like the brilliant “Carpetbaggers” and “Sickos” off their aforementioned debut EP. Sadly, it appears that no one wanted to post pictures of their performance on the internet, hence the lack of a graphic above. But yeah, they were way good anyway.

MP3s:
“Carpetbaggers” - The Harlem Shakes ((highly recommended))
“Sickos” - The Harlem Shakes

But their was no question that the best set of the night - and one of the best of the year, for my money - belonged to the headliners. A summer of coast-to-coast touring has their hype at critical mass and there were no shortage of people in attendance just there to check out what the buzz was all about. But there was also a strong Columbia presence, so much so that one hipster-looking douchebag looked at Rya and I as we walked in and muttered to his friend about how “Ivy League” the scene was. Or something. ANYWAYS, Vampire Weekend fucking KILLED it, and it’s been said before, but it’s worth saying again: this is a band who knows how to play their fucking songs.

With incredible tightness the band blazed through a fourteen song setlist chock-full of solid gold hits excluding only one track (”Boston”) from their untouchable demo LP and adding four new songs, each as good as the demos that preceded them. Ample praise has been lofted in the direction of “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”, “Oxford Comma” and the rest of the songs on their now-infamous Vampire Weekend Blue CD-R, but the new tracks are pretty damn excellent in their own right. Live staples “M79″ and “Arrows” pleased as usual, but “I Stand Corrected” sounded downright single-worthy in its latest incarnation. But it was a brand new track debuted for the first time that night, tentatively titled “Little Giants”, that saw keyboard maestro Rostam Batmangij stepping away from the keys in favor of a guitar and Vampire Weekend at their sunniest, with lyrics about California and skateboards arriving just in time to rekindle lingering memories of summer before fall sets in for good. At least two of the four songs will likely make the band’s debut LP proper, out next January on XL, with the remaining two likely providing some extremely solid B-side fodder on future single releases.

The performance as a whole was impeccable as usual and more, with the band looking like they could belong - nay, thrive - in a venue three times the size of the Music Hall. Their performance was as tight as ever, without so much as the slightest hint of a mis-step to be found. Benefiting from better acoustics and a soundsystem upgraded from the venues the band made their name, Christopher Thomson’s drums sounded massive, breathing a new vitality into the band that elevated the band’s performance above and beyond every set of theirs I’d seen prior to Saturday. Their typical Columbia fan club was in full effect at the front of the crowd, fists pumping and bodies bouncing as usual, only further adding to the addictive energy of the show. All in all it was a phenomenal set - the best I’d seen them play to date and one of the most memorable of the year - and it’s safe to say anyone at the Music Hall that night not already on board the Vampire Weekend train was fully down by the time the band left the stage on Saturday.

The band closed out their main set with a rousing rendition of “Oxford Comma”, perhaps the best song ever written about punctuation, and exited the stage to roars of approval and more deafening cheers from their traveling fan club. I’d never seen them headline a show before, so I wasn’t use to the idea of an encore from the band, but one was obviously coming due to the glaring exclusion of “Walcott” from the tracks they’d played to that point. And less than three minutes later they returned to unleash one of the most euphoric single-song performances I’ve seen in a long time, a straight-up empire-toppling rendition of “Walcott” that brought the room to their collective knees and let everyone in attendance know that this is a band that’s absolutely not fucking around when it comes to epic guitar-pop songs. Considering how amazing the song is live it almost pains me to post the demo version, as it’s the one track on their demo LP that suffers from a noticeably sub-par mixing job (in respect to the vocals, mostly), but it’s best song they’ve written to date and will likely be one of the best songs of the year when it sees an official release - not to mention a professional mixing job - early next year.

MP3s:
“Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” - Vampire Weekend ((highly recommended))
“Walcott” - Vampire Weekend ((highly recommend))

Miss Modern Age has pictures and a decent quality video of “Little Giants” to accompany her account of the show, so head over there at your earliest convenience and break yourself off a slice of the goodness. Also, I recently stumbled upon the trailer for Vampire Weekend (starring frontman Ezra Koenig), the half-baked student film idea from which the band took their name. It’s worth checking out I guess, if only because the first five seconds are pretty much priceless. Get at it here.

In other news, it’s good to be back.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Live Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.