Vampire Weekend @ Enmore Theatre 9/1
Photography Nick McDonald
One of the defining indie-rock bands of this generation is Vampire Weekend, who with the release of their 4th album Father of the Bride last year proved that they are still every bit the fun, easy listening band that they were in their debut year of 2008. In Australia for the Falls Festival in Byron Bay over New Year’s Eve, Vampire Weekend took some time to perform a series of sideshows. At an all ages event in Sydney’s Enmore Theatre on the 9th January, the band showed that their decade of experience has refined and perfected the Vampire Weekend live experience.
As Father of the Bride was never toured in Australia, the new album took centre stage at the Hordern. Literally, as a huge inflatable globe, featured as the album artwork, loomed over the band, positioned with Australia at the front. Opening with “Bambina”, it was clear that despite not being as well-known as the following tracks, “White Sky” and “Holiday” off 2010’s Contra, the upbeat sound of the new album still translated to fans, igniting the dancefloor as singer Ezra Koenig playfully strutted up and down the stage. With soft lighting washing the audience in rich but subtle colours, there was an audio-visual quality to the performance that demanded audience’s complete and undivided attention.
Photography Nick McDonald
Following these openers, the relaxed surf rock riff of “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” threw the young audience right back to 2008. As it wasn’t an official Father of the Bride tour, there was a healthy spread of all Vampire Weekend songs. While classics like “A-Punk”, “Cousins” and “Diane Young” were always going to be huge hits with fans on account of their hyper energetic and dance ready sound, it was good to see such a positive reception to newer hits like “Harmony Hall” and the country blues influenced “Married in a Gold Rush”. There was a surprising amount of tracks from their sophomore album, Contra, which is the relatively lesser known album. However, it is a testimony to the band’s talent that, even a decade after release, the more electronic inspired songs would still resonate with the audience. The only notable exclusion from the setlist was “Oxford Comma”, a disappointment to many fans.
As Vampire Weekend has grown since their debut in 2008, lead singer Ezra Koenig has similarly grown, both as an artist and a songwriter. While the entire band should be credited with a fantastic performance, especially guitarist Brian Robert Jones, Ezra stole the spotlight with his charm and impassioned vocals. This could be seen in his playful demeanour, which added to the infectious joy of songs like “This Life”, “M79” and “Bryn”, and his stellar ability as a vocalist, delivering powerful ballads like “Unbelievers”, “Unbearably White” and the breathtaking “Hannah Hunt”. He embedded the performance with so much of his personality that it was hard to separate Vampire Weekend from their frontman. This included performances of Ezra’s side projects, like Major Lazer’s “Jessica”.
Photography Nick McDonald
One of the other defining aspects of Ezra’s performance, and the Vampire Weekend experience as a whole, was crowd participation. With the more intimate setting of the Enmore Theatre, Ezra created a connection with his audience through participation. An example of this was a fan’s Jersey Girl sign provoking an impromptu cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m Goin’ Down”. At other times, the audience were directly involved in the performance, such as when Ezra commanded the audience to make a clapping beat which subsequently morphed into “Diplomat’s Son”. Ezra continued to let the audience shape the performance during the encore, which was a lineup of fan suggestions including a teaser snippet of “Horchata”, a cover of SBTRKT’s “New Dorp, New York” and a fantastic rendition of “Giving Up the Gun”. Closing the show with a bittersweet performance of “Walcott”, which was also a fan suggestion, Vampire Weekend thanked the crowd and left the stage.
Performances like Vampire Weekend at the Enmore strike the balance between spectacle, as fans were seeing one of the biggest indie-rock bands of this generation, and intimacy, as fans were together with the band in this small Sydney theatre. As a result, the excitement of the fans mixed with the talent of the band and the energy of the music to create both an individually unique but distinctly Vampire Weekend experience.
