Photo: Carsten Windhorst
Vampire Weekend have a chequred history in Scotland. Starting on a small Edinburgh stage in their humble beginnings before being pelted by a subway sandwich in Glasgow’s ABC the New Yorker’s even failed to turn up once when they were a no-show at the Classic Grand in Glasgow. So it was a relief when they did actually turn up for their Edinburgh gig The HMV Picture House, one of the final stops of their UK tour.
The Ralph Lauren loving Ivy-league prep quartet; multiply Seth Cohen by four and give him a guitar and a synthesiser. Unashamedly middle class America, playing on the influences of the Puerto Rican music culture. Jamaican reggae meets the M79 Brooklyn bus route, they sing about trust fund babes and college campus.
Their first album ascended them to the commercial mainstream with their quirky sweet songs of grammar and Cape Cod, and had everybody puzzling over what exactly a Mansard Roof was. Since then, their popularity has soared, and they begun 2010 with a sold-out tour and an appearance in Vogue, proving that geek chic is definitely in.
Touring in aid of new album ’Contra’ the band are taking what their debut album toyed with and amplifying it. An orchestral treat of vibrant pop melodies, marimba drums and reggaeton beats. An intelligent, confident hybrid of calypso keyboards, digital enhancements and huge imagination, guided by Ezra Koenig’s charming falsetto voice.
From the scuttling, fast paced guitar throng of Cousins, which echoes the acoustic ska excitement of old favourite, ‘A-Punk’, to the slow, sad delight of ‘I Think You’re a Contra,” the band present a complete mixed bag of party, poetry and chill-out.
Their lyrics are wonderfully weird. Nowhere else would you chant ferociously about ‘Blake’s’ new face, or the psychotic aesthetic of a balaclava. Tonight Edinburgh heads to the Upper-East Side heads to the Caribbean, whacked out on Horchata and J.D. Salinger. In amongst the weirdness however, are some moral truths. Each upbeat melody has a tinge of sadness, as they sing of broken hearts, power struggles and cultural dislocation, drawing on sincere emotional memory and intimacy.
Such eclecticism perhaps take a while to get used to; you have to climb down the VW rabbit hole as it were, into their strange world of quirky metaphors and a range of vocal chants - the audience unite in a euphoria of during ‘White Sky‘, and chime in for ‘Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa’ in a loyal singalong. This being Valentine’s Day the band throw in a cover of romantic cl;assic ‘Stand By Me’ to the delight of the lovers gathered in the crowd. All this performed against the backdrop of their Conta Album cover girl, who’s eyes flash red mid-show, vampire style.
Vampire Weekend are pushing their own boundaries, creating an iconic and instantly recognisable style of sweetly strange, well-mannered indie-pop that borrows from electronic, dancehall and African influences, making them a band like no other. Tonight Vampire Weekend show
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