Vampire Weekend

I don't often go to see popular music performed live. I mostly don't listen to pop music, but that's not why I don't go. I just don't think there is anything to be gained from seeing someone lip sync his way through exact replicas of overproduced hit singles. If I'm going to pay money to see someone spout off about failed relationships or daddy issues or recentalgia, I want to see some interpretation. Stick an oboe in there somewhere. But when Vampire Weekend (they are pop music) announced that their North American tour would begin in Edmonton, I bought tickets immediately, in spite of the venue. Why? I wanted to see if they could reproduce the jingles from their albums.

Surprisingly enough, I was delighted to find that every second of the Vampire Weekend show was as high-energy, happy, bouncy, and above all, fully orchestrated as their self-titled debut and sophomore follow-up, Contra. "California English" was delivered at a break-neck pace, and the auto-tune was pitch perfect (ha ha, get it?). Even a song like "M79", which features an entire string orchestra, was expertly replicated by only four dudes. Ezra Koenig's vocals were spot on throughout, in spite of jumping around like he was being electrocuted by his guitar. Britney Spears would have been out of breath and begging for a Marlborough halfway through.

Okay, to be fair, they could have done a little more to be creative, to show us something new on stage that we all haven't heard before. But the reality is, 99% of the people there just want to hear "Cousins" and "Oxford Comma" so they can tell their friends how fucking "alt" they are. Maybe a band like this, just poking their heads out of the indie scene into Coldplay's universe, needs to wait until their third album before they can start covering Bowie and doing techno versions of "Mansard Roof."

I hope you all enjoy my shitty iPhone photo of the show.