… And a Merry Vampire Weekend to You All!

On a cold and gloomy week day, my better half and I drove to Oakland’s Fox Theater to watch Vampire Weekend give the last performance of their US tour, hoping (for our sake) that they would go out with a *bang*. The Fox Theater on its own deserves another review, which I will hopefully manage to write after completing the required amount of billable hours some other day …

As to VW: We were not disappointed. Even seated (seated!) at the mezzanine, VW’s infectious energy caught up with us and, by the last song, they had us bouncing off our chairs. If you’re not familiar with Vampire Weekend, I strongly recommend listening to eponymous debut album before diving into their latest Contra. Vampire Weekend, the album, has a familiar storyline for anyone who lived on the East Coast, specifically in Boston and Cape Cod, anyone who went to college, popped their collar, took English lit, listened to Bob Marley, fancied themselves a philosopher, waited tables in Wellfleet and spent innumerable hours in Harvard Square/Foggy Bottom sipping coffee and mingling with Ivy-league folks. But really, I’m doing VW a disservice by limiting them to such a select crowd – their appeal is universal.

On their first album, Mansard Roof opens with lyrics that speak volumes to anyone who’s ever spent a summer in a hot city anywhere in the world, yearning for relief from dust and noise: “I see a salty message written in the eaves/ The ground beneath my feet/The hot garbage and concrete/And now the tops of buildings, I can see them too…” And reversely, the song Walcott, even though it takes shots at a summer hotspots for Bostonites (“Hyannis is ghetto”), it applies to any place where pale sweaty people serve tanned, rested people tall glasses of Arnold Palmer (ah, the irresistible pull of accelerated seasonal income): “Walcott, Don't you know/That it's insane?/Don't you want to/Get out of Cape Cod?/Out of Cape Cod tonight?”

On stage, their footwork is as playful as their strings, and they’re leggy and bouncy in the fashion of ‘80s synth-pop stars, minus the affected stances. They take obvious enjoyment in their music and use the surprise factor in their favor, keeping their songs curt like their lyrics, with abrupt endings that leave you wanting more. Their brand of music has been dubbed by others (more knowledgeable than me) as “preppy punky afro-pop,” but VW themselves profess to be "Upper West Side Soweto" (whatever that is).

Anyway, I love these preppy leggy punks and I think you would like them too. If you don’t already.

PS: Thank you, Tom, for introducing us to them.