vampire weekend
the rickshaw stop
san francisco, ca
2008-03-23
as the subtitle to my blog says, this is a place for ‘live music and liberal rants.’ i’ll be the first to admit that it’s been a little light on the former and heavy on the latter of late. that doesn’t mean that i haven’t been keeping up my usual insane schedule of seeing live music. au contraire, mon frere (ou soeur). it just means that in recent months i’ve been particularly aggravated by both republicans and democrats. which is probably why i’m not affiliated officially with any political party. don’t get me wrong… i love a good party. which is why i go to see so much live music.
in the coming days, i’m going to be posting lots of clips from my huge backlog of shows. big microscope will train its lens on recent (and not so recent) appearances by the charlie hunter trio, rickie lee jones, dumpstaphunk, the gourds, explosions in the sky and iron and wine. well, some of those at least.
but today’s clip comes from a show i attended last sunday at the rickshaw stop (a very cool little club, btw) by the relentlessly hyped vampire weekend.
i went into this show expecting unbelievably great things. so that might explain why i was underwhelmed. after reading all of the hype and hearing nothing but raves from folks who had heard the record, i decided a few months ago (when i bought tickets to this show) to keep myself in a bubble and not listen to any VW (studio album or live shows or youtube videos or anything) until this night. i’m glad i did because i think it allowed me to evaluate this band on the criteria that mean the most to me: are they dynamic live performers? are their songs compelling in a stripped-down live setting? is there tonal variety to the overall ‘sound’ of the artist/band?
while i enjoyed the show, i thought the songs all began to sound the same after a while. there was never any variation in the guitar tone (i understand that this is intentional… the african influence is a deliberate ‘signature’ of the band’s sound). but that just made me hunger for another guitar in the mix. the guys were as pleasant as can be in terms of onstage demeanor… no “we’re the next big thing” swagger, which was refreshing. but it also added to the overall feeling that another year of playing columbia frat parties might have been a good thing for them in terms of developing a broader stylistic range.
i think it will be interesting to see what this band sounds like in three years—if they make it that far.
the complete show from the rickshaw stop can be downloaded here if you do the bit torrent thing.
here’s a sample: a new song of theirs, called “little giant” (if missmodernage over at youtube knows what she’s talking about).
