A crowded night (and crowded encore) at Starlight found Vampire Weekend escalating their legacy

July 27, 2024

Andrew Dodderidge, Daniel Fuchs,

Vampire Weekend. // photo by Daniel Fuchs

Vampire Weekend
with Ra Ra Riot
Starlight Theatre
Monday, July 22

There is a Beatles-esque quality to what Ezra Koenig is trying to achieve with his 18-year-old baby Vampire Weekend. Matching that was a nearly sold-out crowd at Starlight Theatre on Monday night, their first reappearance since the fall of 2010.

Their 2019 effort Father of the Bride came after a brief hiatus and a long six-year break from their most realized LP to-date in Modern Vampires of the City, their first work alongside an outside producer at XL. Koenig spent some of those years hanging out at the library, researching and writing music with graduate students, obliterating the concept of the tortured artist in exchange for a cumulative group effort.

He also spent some of this time becoming enamored of the work of country artist Kacey Musgraves, stating in an interview that “from the first verse, you knew who was singing, who they were singing to, what kind of situation they were in” and that there wasn’t a Vampire track you could say that about, and that “we’ve had three albums of the same voice over and over again, I like the idea of opening up our world a little bit,” referencing the future inclusion of the various guest appearances across the 18-song behemoth. Opening number “Hold You Now” not only featured Danielle Haim from HAIM fame, but sampled a Hans Zimmer piece found in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line…which naturally, the collective opened the night with.

That goes along well with Koenig’s approach to the recently-released Only God Was Above Us, which was partially inspired by the Indian classical music tradition, raga, after he took a singing lesson with minimalist pioneer Terry Riley in Japan. The result? Koenig claims Only features seven of Vampire’s all-time top 10 best songs. A bold claim after rising to the top of the Billboard charts three releases in a row.

The trimmed up, 10-track piece of electricity found eight of its songs climb into the passages of the thousands of attendees on this warm summer night (excluding “The Surfer” and “Pravda”), accumulating in three couplets of showmanship spread out over the 25-song, two hour and fifteen-minute journey. It’s an album I’m confident the masses disagree on the best tracks for, but earns its stripes from matured lyrical moments that hit you in the chest, whether it’s “sifting through centuries for moments of your own” (“Capricorn”) or the on-the-nose and ironic “let me bring you my masterpiece” in “Mary Boone”, whose beat transition completely melted the audience before the evening ended with “Harmony Hall” and “Hope”.

Only’s instrumentation is bolder, its production clearer, the arrangements more complex and elongated. Each song goes in an unexpected direction without losing the coherence created from the outset – a coherence from reading between the ambiguity to find critiques of the upper class and the truth that wealth overrides all other determining factors. It’s an album where Will Canzoneri’s keyboard fills represent that thing the band “found boring in the past, but now have started to find more fresh,” according to Koenig, along with saxophone moments reminiscent of Destroyer’s 2011 classic Kaputt. It’s a complete version of their sophomore (and flattest) attempt Contra.

At the night’s end, “Hope” (whose lyrics are flipped on the track title’s head) exuded a band that sounds defeated by, or possibly at peace with, the ideologies mentioned not only on the nine tracks previous off Only, but all 22 spread out from their entire catalog in the 105 minutes before, giving Canzoneri one last chance to shine, among plentiful opportunity.

The elongated final minutes of “Hope” did not play victim to a “radio cut” in the live setting, moreso giving the group the chance to leave the stage in an atypical, showy fashion, one-by-one, until only Koenig and bassist Chris Baio were left. Then came the encore.

To the surprise of some (and the expectation of the diehard fans), Koenig explained they used to ask for audience requests during this time as a way to create a more collective experience. But now? The requests are required to be cover songs.

The result found short bursts of a brief verse and chorus for 13 sort of irrelevant, but also crowd favorites, fluctuating from Hall & Oates’ “Rich Girl” to Santana’s “Smooth.” When “Superstition” by Stevie Wonder came to the forefront, and an attempt fell flat, Koenig “cut the ripcord.” All in all, I had a smile on my face which shortly turned into a cringe, with the wish that “Pravda,” “Unbelievers” or “Walcott” found their way into the mix.

“Is this the best part of the show or the worst part?” Koenig asked. Luckily, the conclusion came with Modern’s “Ya Hey,” a clearly internationally-inspired cut that cements the legacy of their influences from other genres being woven into the same fabric with ease.

He’s known opening act Ra Ra Riot’s frontman Wes Miles since he was four years old, last touring with the somewhat forgettable indie pop act back in ‘07. Miles’ voice and appearance, as well as the group’s production, seem to mimic their superiors, a trend that has played out over the landscape for the last decade. But none of these copycats have hosted Saturday Night Live four times, and none of them have the pizazz of this trio.

All photos by Daniel Fuchs

Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend setlist
Hold You Now
Holiday
Bryn
Ice Cream Piano
Classical
Connect
White Sky
Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
This Life
Sunflower (extended)
Sympathy (extended)
Bambina
How Long?
Oxford Comma
Capricorn
Gen-X Cops
Diane Young
Cousins
A-Punk
Prep-School Gangsters
Mary Boone
Harmony Hall
Hope

Cover Encore (snippets):
Rich Girl (Hall & Oates)
Escape (The Pina Colada Song) (Rupert Holmes)
Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going to Be a Long, Long Time) (Elton John)
Smooth (Santana)
Santeria (Sublime)
Brown Eyed Girl (Van Morrison)
Superstition (Stevie Wonder)
Tequila (The Champs)
Sweet Caroline (Neil Diamond)
Sound System (Operation Ivy)
Ooh La La (Faces)
Peggy Sue (Buddy Holly)
Rock Lobster (The B-52s)

Encore:
Worship You
Ya Hey

Ra Ra Riot