Vampire Weekend in Paris - 13 December 2024

Maybe it was the strings of Christmas lights around Paris, but Vampire Weekend’s December 13 concert at Adidas Arena felt like a family holiday reunion – one where the cousins you haven’t seen in years show up and surprise you with their maturity, even as you fall into the comfortable rhythms of conversation you had as kids.

The setlist spanned the band’s nearly twenty-year career. Old hits «A-Punk» and «Oxford Comma» mixed with tracks from the band’s latest release, this year’s «Only God Was Above Us». The show started quietly, with frontman Ezra Koening playing solo as other members joined, eventually completing a seven-piece touring act, with backup musicians switching between keyboards, guitars, saxophones, and, at one point, violin. (The band started as a four-piece and now has three permanent members.)

In interviews and on his internet radio show Time Crisis, frontman Koenig has shown he’s a careful student of musicians’ careers, including his own. He discusses his admiration for artists like the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen, who maintain their creative edge across albums, tours, and stages of life.

The band’s first three records were of a piece – a series that tracked life from post-college excitement to late-20s maturity. The next record, 2019’s «Father of the Bride», and subsequent tour showed the influence of the shaggier side of the classic rock acts Koenig admires. By comparison, «Only God Was Above Us» is tighter, more familiar, but by no means repetitive. The band sounds comfortable, but not complacent. They’re confident. This could be the next phase or a final form that lasts for years.

That confidence came through live. The musicians wore white and gray, and the largely monochromatic stage lighting gave the show a clean, bright, stark look. The band was tight. Extended instrumentals on the tracks «Sunflower» and «New Drop. New York» showed off their chops, while the dynamic variations on «Mary Boone» and «Unbearably White» demonstrated range and restraint. It was a showcase of songs, skills, and planning. New songs felt familiar, old songs felt fresh. Set-closer «Hope» saw the members walk off stage individually, with each new absence making the song (one of the band’s best) even more haunting than it plays on the record.

Koenig kept his stage banter to French whenever possible, even while announcing the encore stunt in which the band takes requests for songs that are not in their catalog. They pulled off pieces of «December, 1963», «No Surprises», and «It’s All Coming Back to Me Now», but struggled on the more local requests «Ça Plane Por Moi» and «Les Champs-Élysées», though the crowd was content to sing it a capella for a few bars.

A well-done verse and chorus of «Chop Suey!» closed out the requests section before the band went into «Wolcott». It was a fitting closer. The song, with its references to New England geography, was once a hobby horse for critics to ride – proof of a studied, erudite coastal aloofness that was of-a-time with the twee cuteness that had overtaken indie in the late aughts. But on stage, with the band at full blast and the stadium nearly full, it was clear all that studying had paid off. The band wasn’t back. They never left.

- Gabe Bullard  

Promoter: Radical Production