Vampire Weekend’s first South Florida appearance in six years opened modestly Friday night at Bayfront Park in Miami, with the band’s three founding members performing a three-song set at the lip of the stage, a giant banner emblazoned with their band name towering behind them. A more muscular version of “Hold You Now,” perennial fan favorite “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,” early deep cut “One”—all were fine examples of the group’s intimate, stripped-down foundations, but surely the entire show wouldn’t proceed with such instrumental austerity?
Sure enough, the banner behind them then rose, revealing the octet that has been touring with Vampire Weekend on its seemingly endless Only God Was Above Us jaunt, and we were off to the races with three such tunes from the album of the same name, in all their richly layered, sonically colorful glory.
Frontman Ezra Koenig spoke little over the course of a more than two-hour set that triumphantly traversed the group’s five albums of baroque preppy hipster pop, a fog machine emitting an occasional noirish mist. With the expansion of the group’s musicality over the its last couple of albums, touring musicians such as saxophonist Collin Killalea and violinist Ray Suen featured prominently throughout. They were the anchors of the band’s reimagined “Sunflower,” which, with its ska rhythms, soul-jazz licks and shifting tempos, resembled both hoe-down and loft jam; bassist Chris Baio even added some Mario Brothers-inspired basslines in the mix, while the stage lights cast a soft yellow hue over the extended cut. As it was when I saw Vampire Weekend at Kilby Block Party in Utah last year, “Sunflower” was the centerpiece of the show.
But highlights abounded throughout, including the molten groove of “Sympathy,” which found Suen playing his violin like a crazed bluegrass fiddler; the unexpected inclusion of the rarely played “Everlasting Arms;” “Diane Young,” in which the group’s rollicking Bruce Springsteen influence was on full display; and the lighter-waving neo-gospel ballad “Mary Boone,” which featured Koenig singing next to a neon rod. With the lone exception of “The Surfer,” which felt a bit muddled and two-dimensional in this context, every other selection on the set list transcended its recorded form, and most of them kept the audience on their feet and moving throughout, especially the late-set medley of “A-Punk,” “Campus” and “Oxford Comma.”
The band essentially covered all of its hits during the sprawling set, leaving us to wonder what jewels they were saving for the encore. But instead of dedicating this time to their own material (save for the classic send-off of “Wolcott”), the group asked the audience for requests of covers for them to play, all of which showcased the group’s chameleonic ability, through sense-memory and McGyvering solutions, to find their way through portions of “Sweet Dreams,” “Scarlet Begonias,” “This Must Be the Place,” “Mr. Big,” “Hips Don’t Lie,” “Heroes” (this one was good enough to become a part of their regular set) “Wicked Game,” “Three Little Birds” and more. It was like immersing oneself in an ADD jukebox of 50 years of popular music—and further proof that these ace musicians can do just about anything. We can only hope they won’t let another six years expire before their next appearance here.
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