Vampire Weekend brings Ska Night to the Hollywood Bowl

It turned out that Wednesday night was Ska night at the Hollywood Bowl.

That's how Ezra Koenig described Vampire Weekend's latest visit to the iconic Cahuenga Pass venue, where he and his bandmates arrived this week shortly after for a world tour behind their fifth studio album, Only God Was Above Us. In truth, the LP has less to do with that venerable Jamaican style than any of Vampire Weekends' other records; Ska, at this point, is just one of the 17 secret ingredients of our signature sound, as Koenig brought it to the stage.

But it was in keeping with Only Gods' deep thoughts on history and Vampire Weekend's broader world-building instinct to organize this sold-out show around a strong concept tied to the band's beginnings. So, two long-running ska bands in English Beat and Riversides Voodoo Glow Skulls as opening acts, as well as a handful of oldies that Vampire Weekend has ska-ified, to use Koenigs' term, over the course of its two o'clock. .

Sunflower was lean and stringy, Ottoman slightly manic in its propulsion, Giving Up the Gun was probably the band's most compelling remake, alternating between bouncy verses and a breakneck double-time chorus that would have made Operation Ivy proud. Did Koenig, 40, present these tracks, in tried-and-true ska revival fashion, with wacky alternative tracks like Skaflower and, uh, Skattoman? Alas, he did. But you had to appreciate the thoroughness of his vision.

Indeed, this reworking of familiar material showed just how proficient a live band Vampire Weekend has become over the past five years. When they emerged from New York's Columbia University in the mid-2000s, Koenig and the band's other members, bassist Chris Baio, drummer Chris Tomson, and multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij (who has since left) ​​came across as charming but hesitant studio rats whose blog-era fusion of indie rock, ska and African pop worked ingeniously on record but lacked muscle and finesse on stage.

Now based in Los Angeles, Vampire Weekend, in its live version of seven musicians (including a saxophonist and a second drummer), plays today like a seasoned jam band: funky, deft, eager to follow a groove somewhere without ever get that far away from Koenigs. well-sculpted melodies that everyone is likely to get bored of.

During new album Classical, the band's saxophonist Colin Killalea took a wild solo while a stagehand dressed in a high-visibility trucker suit took off his orange vest and performed a dance routine in the middle of the stage.

Like Vampire Weekends' later albums, Only God Was Above Us was recorded with painstaking precision by Koenig and producer Ariel Rechtshaid, who came in Wednesday to join Capricorn and Gen-X Cops. (Crucially, Rechtshaid got his start in a Los Angeles ska band called The Hippos before working with Madonna, Usher and Haim.) Its noisy cacophony evokes a sense of barely held together chaos, a meditation from afar on groups. hometown New York, perhaps, or a riff on the messiness of parenting in the wake of Koenigs having a child with his romantic partner, actress Rashida Jones.

Yet Only God only really came to life at the Bowl, the songs peppering with guitar licks and undulating piano lines cutting beautifully against each other beneath the still-childish longing of Koenigs' vocals.

Beyond new releases and old ska classics, Vampire Weekend offered an energetic Cousins, a dreamy Hannah Hunt and a vibrant Harmony Hall with welcome echoes of classic acid house. For an encore, the band played a song Koenig wrote for Tim Robinson's Netflix sketch comedy show, I Think You Should Leave. Robinson himself ran on stage to do a little awkward wave before responding to the audience's demands: Steely In Peg, which Koenig interrupted. after confessing that he needed the backing vocals of Michael McDonald, the Grateful Dead's Touch of Gray and the B-52's Rock Lobster.

After that one, Koenig told the crowd that he was having a hard time with Bowls' 11 p.m. curfew and had to move on to Walcott, which he called the traditional Vampire Weekends farewell song. But we had the feeling that, for him, the pleasure of the demands, the pleasure of the challenge was only just beginning.