Vampire Weekend, with White Williams at Liberty Hall, 9/11/08

Vampire Weekend, with White Williams

Better than: Peter Gabriel (post-Genesis)

By RICHARD GINTOWT

For the past few years, I’ve had a theory that high school kids are listening to worse and worse music. Mostly it’s because of the emo crap they’re spoonfed by Hot Topic and Warped Tour, but also because I haven’t heard as many original young bands in the Lawrence area as when I was in college. I could be totally wrong about this, but it’s fun to conjecture about, and not entirely without possibility.

Last night, the kids were out in full force to see Vampire Weekend. I spotted at least two entire families at Liberty Hall – one with a singing-along seven-year-old in tow – and plenty of chaperones with teenagers. When I tried to get to the front of the stage to snap some pictures, my overtures of “Sorry, I’m shooting for the newspaper” were met with sassy replies from teenage girls who were going batshit crazy for a band that sings about Oxford commas and how “collegiate grief has left you dowdy in sweatshirts.”

Which all goes to say: there might still be hope for our nation’s youth.

More after the jump.