Vampire Weekend

It’s fitting that Vampire Weekend have decided to road test their new material at KCLSU, seeing as how they are famously a band indebted to halls of academia and the gentle collegiate swing of life. Still, as the quartet take to the stage the difference between the Wes Anderson-Rushmore education you imagine these four boys had and the lairy beer in a plastic cup students Britain have is marked. Somehow, though, rowdiness suits Vampire Weekend and older songs like ‘One’ and ‘Campus’ certainly benefit from a healthy injection of crowd participation, although the circle pit during ‘Oxford Comma’ is perhaps a bit much - nobody gives that little of a fuck.

Though the to see a small venue gig from a band whose star has ascended so high so quickly is enticing, the club atmosphere clashes somewhat with their genteel aesthetic, as displayed by the sweat turning bassist Chris Baio’s band trademark pastel blue shirt a much darker colour. Nonetheless the small audience essentially exists as a a focus group for new material. Striking the balance between playing new songs and old, Ezra Koenig and co don't milk forthcoming album Contra but they do bust out a good four or five songs, including the blog favourite ‘Horchata’ and ‘White Sky’ which was first aired last year. The former is an eccentric ode to a Mexican drink, tonight performed intimately with multi instrumentalist Rotstam Batmanglij sitting on the stage to play keyboard whilst Koenig claimed the band had been 'dying' to perform the song, though he was losing his voice. Elsewhere the new songs sound louder and more dense (no doubt a trick learnt from touring the first album worldwide) and are accompanied by a new-found sense of escapism. It’s easy to dismiss Vampire Weekend as preppy rich kids but what they do on songs like set highlight ‘Mansard Roof’ and the new ‘Holiday’, a summer anthem in waiting, is document the minutiae of life. Just because it’s a life you and I maybe can’t relate to doesn’t make the observations any less astute.

Some moments of the show feel flat though, as if the band haven’t been away long enough for some songs to have become interesting again (‘Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa’ we’re looking at you), and as mentioned, seeing a crowd go crazy for songs about topics as unemotional as English grammar and the shape of Upper East Side roofing is somewhat disconcerting. However people get off on Vampire Weekend because ultimately they write breezy pop songs, and not even a broken guitar string can stop the indie disco hit ‘A-Punk’ being the best of these tonight. As a taught and lean 45 minute set leaves the crowd sated but longing for more you wouldn’t bet against Contra being one of the defining albums of 2010.