As chaotic and inventive as the Vampire Weekend arrangements exceed five studio albums, things never feel out of control. Production and mixture are impressive, a wedding cake that could reverse if a note lands in its place. And while the instrumentation and complexity of their songs have grown only over the years – leading to the excellent and dense album of 2024, “Only God was based” – the group’s live show only released, allowing some moments of shaggy dog on the favorites of fans. Fortunately, the music is lying for it.
The group, approaching the end of the second stage of its marathon tour “Only God”, stopped in Montclair, the Tiny Wellmont theater of New Jersey to play four nights as a hometown concert for singer and guitarist Ezra Koenig and drummer Chris Tomson, who were noted in the garden state. Since the group played two shows at the Madison Square Garden the last time they were in Tristate, the place created a perfect intimacy for the opening of the set. The group, a trio with bassist Chris Baio, started the September 18 show with interpretations of a successful success of “Incroyvant”, “Holiday” and “One (Blake’s Got A New Face) groups”, instant songs that played on the instincts earlier and more thorny of the group.
With the drop of a curtain, the group went into record mode with a trio of Side-A songs from “Only God”, flanked by a large tour group with five other musicians. While the gang has certainly expanded the sound, he left Koenig’s voice constantly on the verge of audibility – which, to be fair, could have been the result of the much smaller place. But while we could ask if Vampire weekend is the kind of group that needs A second set of battery, inhabited by the percussionist Garrett Ray, or two additional guitars to complete the Net game of Koenig, this allows their compositions to have more texture.
A dozen songs in their program two hours and more, the group has become much loose, taking the 2019 “Sunflower” Cup for a walk. The piece of macabre inspiration seemed clear with the fleet of musicians who attack the groove, and it was clear that it was the direction that the group found the most exciting. Jammier’s moments have never derailed the tighter songs, but rather gave them a pinch of new energy, whether it was the piano that flourishes during the “Harmony Hall” or Sax verses in “Cousins”.
The new feeling of these successes was printed in the brain of fans never made them unrecognizable, but it was refreshing to hear the group find new ways sneaky in the material they played endless. In a year when more and more groups with generation y fans are on tour in order to withdraw birthdays from the album and monetize the warm and vague feelings of youth, it is pleasant to know that the weekend of vampires is far from an act of nostalgia. Instead, they are a group that is worth aging.
