Vampire Weekend - Prince of Wales - 6th August 2008
Featuring: Vampire Weekend
Written by: Matt Bahr-Wright
Published: Aug 6th '08
Being new on the scene and on their first visit to the country, there was a sense of intrigue as to how Vampire Weekend’s sound would be translated to the live arena. After a polite greeting and strangely mediocre applause, drummer Chris Tomson pounded out the opening beats to ‘Mansard Roof’, inspiring the crowd. Lead singer Ezra Koenig matched this enthusiasm, and raised the performance with watertight vocals and frenzied guitar playing.
The set was predictable – it’s always difficult for a band with just one full-length under their belt to put together a truly engaging show. Finishing with arguably the band’s greatest hit, ‘Oxford Comma’, they then gave in and appeased the crowd’s calls for an encore. Koenig, however, informed the crowd they were running out of songs to play, despite the fact they had only been on stage for 40 minutes.
Given their performance in this brief set, time and further albums will very likely see Vampire Weekend grow into the stratosphere of the bands they are being compared with. While they are proof the hype machine can be right on the money, only time will tell if they are truly the great band people are touting them as.
