in Review: Vampire Weekend at Huntington Bank Pavilion
Photos by Will McLaughlin
Saturday, July 27th, Vampire Weekend made their return to Chicago for two nights at Huntington Bank Pavilion, selling a total of nearly thirty thousand tickets.
When going to a Vampire Weekend show you can rest assured that you will get to hear the hits. But outside of that, everything else in the set is pretty up in the air depending on what the group is feeling like that night. This being my second time seeing the band at Huntington Bank Pavilion, I was feeling a fair amount of deja vu. However, because of their wide range in their set-list picks, I found this show to be its own stand-alone experience.
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Holiday
Cousins
One (Blake’s Got a New Face)
Ice Cream Piano
Classical
Connect
White Sky
Unbelievers
This Life
Sunflower
Sympathy
The Surfer
Bambina
Campus
Capricorn
Gen-X Cops
Diane Young
A-Punk
Cocaine Cowboys
Prep-School Gangsters
Mary Boone
Harmony Hall
Hope
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Hold You Now
Oxford Comma
Bryn
Ice Cream Piano
Classical
Connect
Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
This Life
Sympathy
New Dorp. New York
How Long?
Pravda
Capricorn
Gen-X Cops
Diane Young
Cousins
A-Punk
Prep-School Gangsters
Mary Boone
Hannah Hunt
Harmony Hall
Hope
Their performance started out with only the three founding members on stage, Chris Baio (bass), Chris Tomson (drums), and Ezra Koenig (vocals/guitar). After a few songs the curtain behind them dropped to reveal their extremely full band of musicians. This dramatic reveal was a great start to the show and raised the energy in the crowd. 6 One similarity I noticed between the times I have seen Vampire Weekend live is how genuinely happy their music makes people. Throughout the set there was a couple standing in front of me who had huge smiles as they danced and sang along to every song. Being in a crowd full of people with this kind of energy is truly contagious and always leaves me with a warm fuzzy feeling.
Another note I have taken after seeing the band multiple times is that you are always going to get your money's worth, as they play for around 2 hours. With this long of a set, they like to split the show into different sections. Most notably was about halfway through the show when they projected the face of their friend behind them and Koenig casually said “that's my buddy Ariel.” This part of the show was referred to as “phase two” which featured glow in the dark visuals and the performance of a few of Koenig’s solo songs.
Before the encore they played the song “Hope,” which stylistically tied the show back to the way it began. At the end of the song each band member let their instrumental part to drop out as they left the stage one-by-one. This gave each performer a moment to shine as they bowed and left the stage before returning for the encore.
At the end of every Vampire Weekend show they start their encore by playing bits of songs suggested by the audience. For this show they played sections of the songs “Son of a Preacher Man,” “Walls,” “Saturday in the Park,” “My Sweet Lord,” “Pumped Up Kicks,” “Wagon Wheel,” “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” “Kids,” “Train in Vain,” “Psycho Killer,” “Linger,” and “Up the Junction.” Not only is this another aspect that makes every live performance unique, but it is also a testament to how skilled they are as musicians to be able to perform song requests on the spot.
Vampire Weekend still has a crazy amount of stops left on their tour, so I would highly recommend making it out to one of their shows if you can. To see if they are coming to a city near you, go to vampireweekend.com or follow this link to be notified of when they announce an event in your area.
