Koenig’s in a bomber jacket. Or maybe he’s not. Maybe I made that up, but it feels true—like how “Harmony Hall” always feels like a song that was already part of your life before you heard it. They open with “Cousins,” and the place combusts in an Ivy League fever dream, all whipcrack guitar and frantic percussion. That song doesn’t start so much as it detonates. There’s no easing into a Vampire Weekend show. You’re dropped into it mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-existential crisis about punctuation marks.
Eventim Apollo isn’t built for pogoing, but try telling that to this crowd. The preppy boys—polos buttoned to the top even in the swamp of bodies—are losing their minds. The girl in the corduroy blazer next to me screams the “Oxford Comma” chorus with the fervor of a scholar who has spent one too many hours arguing grammatical hierarchies on Twitter. A decade and a half on, that song is still the indie rock equivalent of a knowing smirk. Snark with a melody.
Ezra Koenig, by the way, is a sorcerer. There’s something about the way he wields a guitar like an afterthought, how his voice lands somewhere between effortless cool and knowing affectation. He plays “Diane Young” like it’s a speeding ticket he’s never going to pay. The yelps, the manic surf-punk tempo—it’s all unhinged in the best way. Somewhere mid-song, someone flings their drink skyward. I see droplets freeze in the air under the stage lights like a moment suspended in a Wes Anderson film. Or maybe I’m just romanticizing a £7.50 pint of warm lager.
It occurs to me, somewhere in the breezy shimmer of “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,” that Vampire Weekend are, paradoxically, one of the most cosmopolitan and geographically untethered bands to ever sound this specifically like a liberal arts campus in 2008. There’s an expansiveness to their sound—polyrhythms, harpsichords, lyrical references to Peter Gabriel and Spanish steps—that should feel self-consciously academic but never does. It’s the magic trick they’ve been pulling off for years. The world shrinks and expands in their songs.
“Step” rolls in with its glacial harpsichords, a song that feels like it was written by someone who fell in love with their own erudition and then somehow made that endearing. It’s a moment of pause before the inevitable second wind. And then the snap of “A-Punk,” which is still, somehow, the most reliable three minutes in indie rock. You can see it coming a mile off and it still hits like a bottle rocket. There’s an undeniable joy to it—half the crowd is bouncing like toddlers on a sugar high, the other half is filming it for Instagram stories that will never be watched again.
The “Only God Was Above Us” tracks sound denser, richer, like a band stretching out rather than settling in. “Gen-X Cops” is all spiraling guitars and jittery energy, a song that feels like running down an up escalator. “Mary Boone” expands into something grander live, Koenig’s vocals pushing against the sonic tide, weightless and precise. It’s a setlist that doesn’t rest on nostalgia, though they know exactly when to lean into it.
And then, just when you think they’re done, they come back. Encores are usually a formality, but this one feels necessary, like an unfinished thought that needs closing. “White Sky” as a closer is an inspired choice, Koenig’s falsetto stretching into something helium-light, the room turning into one massive, swaying chorus. It’s both an ending and a beginning, the kind of moment that lingers like an aftertaste.
And then the lights come up. The spell breaks. The polo-shirt boys wipe sweat from their brows, the girl in the corduroy blazer turns to her friend and says, “I think I left my dignity in the mosh pit.” Maybe she did. Maybe we all did. It’s hard to say. Outside, the night air feels different. Lighter. Maybe that’s just what happens after a band like Vampire Weekend takes you somewhere, then deposits you back into the world slightly changed, slightly disoriented, and entirely alive.
Words & photos – Richard Isaac
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