Vampire Weekend & Damn Shames - Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen, London - 17.1.08
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
Maybe it's something to do with the fact that the music bizz nizz has finally shaken off its hangover and decided to emerge from the slumber induced by the end of 2007 in search of more booze. Maybe it's because Vampire Weekend are one of those five thousand Next Big Things I read about in everything from thelondonpaper to planB at the minute. Maybe it's because the two things, on this horrid Thursday in horrid Hoxton, combine - but everyone is here. Bands, DJs, press, the good looking, everyone. And then there's me. But I feel happy in my place here because Vampire Weekend have definitely, definitely stolen my look. The jeans that aren't skinny but actually fit thing, the chequered shirt collar rippling over the top of a nice normal jumper, the hair that needed cutting a week ago shtick - I was doing that all the way through new rave, mate. The rest of the audience is yet to catch up, but me an' V.W. are on the same aesthetic wavelength at least.
There's a band on before them, called Damn Shames, who nobody cares about because all anyone gives a damn about is Vampire Weekend. Shame. There's much about this band you can love, in particular the bits where their drum machine pulls out a certifiably mental tambourine sound, they hammer their instruments like they've only got five seconds left on earth and scream their lungs inside out. Or the bits where they play a really PiL-like guitar solo which is meant to be a riff, except it doesn't come across that way because they're playing it so fast that it's impossible to play it the same way twice. Those bits work brilliantly. The sections where they're just hammering the same two chords over and over and settling in to slightly predictable melody are less impressive, but useful in that they make your smiles when they get to one of their fantastic silly bits all the wider.
But me oh my everyone just smiles the whole gig through when Vampire Weekend take to the stage in this curious brasserie-cum-venue. There's really not a lot of point in being at the front for a Vampire Weekend show - there's nothing by way of a visual spectacle to their performances whatsoever. But the same can be said of the Pixies can't it, and what they share with Black Francis and co. is that the most important thing about their band is the sheer strength of the songs. What Vampire Weekend don't really have however, which the Pixies had in abundance, is (bar a massive drum sound, that little bit of reverb they put on it made every thwack sound just tickety-boo...) anything of an edge. These songs are melodious, catchy, inventive, surprising, but they're just smooth as silk. It doesn't matter that they're smooth as silk because they're quite so melodious, catchy, inventive and surprising though - you get it?
All these songs are great. Yep, each of them. All but one track from their forthcoming self titled LP (released in a few weeks on XL Recordings) is recreated, reinvigorated, improved upon. Two of them- the leprosy like catchiness of 'Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa' and current single 'A-Punk' - get renditions that promote them from the status of 'great' to that of 'utter genius'. And, as happened the last (and first) time we caught them, supporting The Shins at Hammersmith Apollo - the hugeness of the venue not daunting them one bit, they looked like they belonged there - everyone in the crowd knows the words to 'One (Blake's Got A New Face)' by the time the first chorus is over. They bellow them through their smiles, hugging their friends, forgetting all tribulations.
(Apologies for the quality of the photos - poor phone camera. And I was having a dance.)
'I felt like I was watching the O.C.', says one punter to his friend as we shuffle out, post a last shake of our limbs to a jumped up encore of 'Oxford Comma'. And even though he only said it to annoy his far more enthusiastic companion, sardonically drawing his attention to the fact that although Vampire Weekend are playing this really cool venue to this really cool crowd (and me) they're actually not cool whatsoever, fella's got a point. I could be laying in bed hungover on a Sunday afternoon (don't judge me), half an eye on the telly, and this could be the soundtrack to some fanciful thirty year old pretending to be a teenager romance. But I think Vampire Weekend have an interesting way of avoiding the backlash laid upon bands by people like that once they transcend the toilet circuit and start making some money, selling records, having fans and all that stuff (yeah, I know, it's like punk rock never happened). It's precisely because they're not cool, not even now, that this won't matter. They're not they're not they're not. Don't give me any of that 'oh I love how it sounds like Talking Heads, really Afrobeat...', because in your heart of hearts you know it sounds like Paul Simon and the Police. And they were never cool. Neither are these guys. Know what else they've got in common though, why you love all three, the one fact the backlash won't dent? Fine, fine songs.
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