“The world’s best Vampire Weekend tribute band”

In celebration of Basil Exposition’s third birthday and the handing in of my dissertation that morning (hurray!) I went along to a free gig on Friday night — the eponymous debut Vampire Weekend album performed by Neil Hannon, with help from famous friends Jape (Richie Egan), Romeo from the Magic Numbers and Cathy Davey, plus strings players and a fabulous drummer who I think was called Ross.

I went with warm but fairly low expectations, and was bowled over by how tight the ensemble sounded — I later discovered that they’d had a couple of rehearsals together, and it really showed (the images above are from those rehearsals).  The audience seemed determined to have a good time, and absolutely erupted by the time we got to “A-Punk”, and stayed in very good form for the rest of the night.  The band whipped through the album material looking like they were having a terrific time.

After one rendition of the album, Hannon came back on to do a couple of songs of his own solo, which was perhaps the least satisfying bit of the night — of course I love Hannon and his work, but I was surprised with how much I enjoyed seeing him in a band, working with and feeding off others’ performances.  I absolutely love seeing Hannon play solo gigs, but this night made me realise it’s been ages since I saw him do a show that wasn’t him on his own with a piano or guitar (excepting, now that I think of it, the Duckworth Lewis Method gig last year).

It was also nice to see Hannon but not have it be all about him the entire time — vocals were farmed out to all four named performers, with Cathy Davey generally having to do the high ones (a great “One (Blake’s Got a New Face)”), Richie Egan doing the punchier ones like “Oxford Comma” and “Walcott”, and Romeo doing, for my money, a glorious “I Stand Corrected”.  After the Hannon solo bit the rest of the band came back on to do a song each by Davey, Romeo and Egan (all of them brilliant, actually, and everyone really getting into everyone else’s material in a very charming way — no ego) and they finished, through sheer audience pressure, by encoring four of the VW songs, as well as doing “Tonight We Fly” because “we’ve bloody rehearsed it”.  A great sweaty cheering night out, and the perfect way to celebrate finishing my dissertation.

Note: the post title is Hannon’s own estimation of their performance, but I think I’d fall in with it.

See comments for setlist.

EDIT: I’ve been slapped on the wrist for failing to thank my brother (and his wife) for getting me my ticket to this — so thanks!