As their success has grown, Vampire Weekend have certainly not forgotten the supporters that elevated them to where they are today. In the lead up to the release of their second album, they have given away the first single off the LP to fans for free, they have made their entire follow up effort available for streaming on their website and today performed a free gig at Somerset House in London prior to an in-store session tomorrow.
This is the first time the band have officially debuted their second album live in the UK. Gigs a year or so ago in support of their debut release featured a couple of new songs such as White Sky, but even then they seemed to be included to try and ascertain reaction rather than announcing them as definite frontrunners for their next release. With their new tracks featuring a lot more percussion, I was slightly concerned that the vibe this creates on the record overall would be lost in live sets purely because there is no way that the four band members can play their normal instruments plus all these additional pieces of equipment at the same time. Although the lack of on-stage percussion is noticeable, it does not at all affect the overall live experience of these new songs. The band throw as much fervor as they can possibly muster into their performance and this is undeniably reflected in the music; you can't help but be additonally won over by some already storming tracks when the people playing them are so obviously enthralled by the entire affair. Much to the delight of the crowd, the set was comprised of a fairly even mixture of both old and new songs, with latest songs such as Horchata and Holiday holding up well against favourties such as A-Punk and Oxford Comma. They raced through new single Cousins with such vigour you could feel the ripples of subsequent delight reverberate through the crowd, and lead singer Ezra Koenig was nothing but utterly charming with his jittery dances and witty banter during a technical hitch.
Somerset House itself is no stranger to hosting gigs; every summer over a two week period, top name musicians are lined up to play in the courtyard as the sun sets over a throng of music lovers. As much as I wanted this gig to be as good as ones in this series I have been to in the past, it wasn't. However, this was not by any means the bands fault, it was entirely due to the staging of the event. The courtyard is currently home to a rather large ice rink, but instead of setting up a stage in front of this directly next to where the crowd were standing, they placed the band on a balcony over the opposite side of said rink. It may have all been very aesthetically pleasing, but from a performance perspective they may as well have just stuck the lads on the roof. The band were obviously slightly perturbed with the gaping distance left between themselves and the majority of their audience (a lucky few got to be on the ice during the performance) but still did their utmost to interact with the watching crowd and this did not go unnoticed. This was separation anxiety at it's most literal, with the watching masses also distinctly uneasy about being stuck behind such an expanse they were not used to encountering. Despite Koenig's efforts to encourage his audience to sing along, as soon as fans realised they could actually hear themselves and the people next to them singing startlingly clearly over the band and the fairly weak speakers, all form of participation was paralysed and the atmosphere swiftly knocked dead.
I'm not complaining, really. I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to see one of my favourite bands not only perform live but for free, and I'm positive the other members of the thousand or so strong crowd were just as appreciative. It's simply a pity that such a good and honorable opportunity was markedly ruined by some rather poor stage design and a giant slab of ice.
(You may not have been at the gig but you can still experience VW's music for yourself without even leaving this page. The ever-generous boys have made it possible for their album to be streamed over other websites as well, so please have a listen below and if you like what you hear then pay their generosity back and buy the album!)
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