The Relentless Garage is a recently refurbished venue just by Highbury and Islington tube station, and on Wednesday it played host to a few hundred Vampire Weekend fans who had won an HMV competition to see the band play by pre-ordering a copy of their second album, Contra.
The band took to the stage surprisingly early at 8.30pm and performed an hour-long set including favourites from their eponymous 2008 album and songs from their new album, which recently topped the US Billboard Chart.
The lead singer Ezra Koenig mentioned several times that they were just getting back into touring so they were grateful of the opportunity to practice, and it was probably a comfortable experience playing new material in front of a crowd who has definitely all purchased the second album. But the band seemed pretty polished, even with the new tracks, and are obviously great musicians. The crowd went pretty wild and personally I find that Vampire Weekend churn out they type of music that it’s impossible to stay still to.
Following on my last gig when I saw Editors play at the Water Rats, Vampire Weekend definitely continued the trend of band members who look like they turned up to the wrong gig. They keyboard player seemed completely out of things, wrapped up in a thick cardigan in a room that wasn’t at all cold, and although he managed to play all his parts, some of them did seem slightly slower than they should have been. The views from the audience included ‘stoned’, ‘on heroin’, ‘jet lagged’ and ‘flu’, but what ever it was he was definitely somewhere else.
Having said that, it didn’t impact on the gig as a whole and it was great to be up so close to the stage when previously I’ve only seen them on huge outdoor stages, including supporting Blur in the summer at Hyde Park. Although the set was short and they didn’t do an encore, it was more than enough to make for a fantastic evening. I certainly now have higher expectations of them when I seem them play Brixton later in the month!
Vampire Weekend are touring the UK in February
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