When the average indie kid hears Vampire Weekend, they become giddy and codoned, like a girl scout on oxycontin wafers.
The question is…Why? These Columbia-learned Ivy Leaguers aren’t dangerous, threatening, even impolite for that matter.
They don’t play some new amalgam of Ziggy Stardust and the Rolling Stones that you are the first blogger to know about. But they do sound like Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel had a Bowie/Jagger boy party and abandoned their Blue Blood baby in downtown Johannesburg.
So I guess that is a new sound no one knew about but their gently playful fathers – and it’s so amiable and alluring that every club in the U.S. and abroad is inviting them over to their stage.
The Minneapolis mid-level Triple Rock Social Club was lucky enough to get some face time with VW Thursday, and 21-year-old former girl scouts as well as 50-year-old longhairs were swooned by this month’s hottest boys in the band.
Some indie-elitists claim the sound is too derivative of Simon and Gabriel to be pure genius, but by the third song of the set even the most cynical of the tight trousered crowd was gushing. With the audience at their beck and call, the Vamps invited them to “dance a little.” Oblige they did, as the band – in the face of such hype – shrugged off the challenge, not missing a note through the call and response of “One (Blake’s Got a New Face)” to the skanky jitter of “A-Punk.”
The boys tried a taste of danger as they punkily snarled out “Oxford Comma” – but came off absolutely sober and charming.
A great album, a great effort on stage, a great tour – so what can Vampire Weekend possibly do next to win the blogs and minds of indie kids?
“We’re working on a new album, but it’s hard re-recording Tom Petty’s Greatest Hits," quipped frontman Ezra Koenig.
-Leif
When the average indie kid hears Vampire Weekend, they become giddy and codoned, like a girl scout on oxycontin wafers.
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