It’s been a while since I’ve been to any gigs, but the wait was well worth it for New Yorkers Vampire Weekend, an event I could hardly bring myself to miss when combined with Melbourne quintet Little Red.

As Alexandra mentioned in an earlier post, Little Red are an awesomely fun band, with roots in 50s and 60s pop. Their brilliant album Listen to Little Red is only outdone by their deliciously
energetic live performances (well, one performance in this case, but I’ve heard excellent things about others).

It’s great to see a range of singers getting their piece in, with three of the five members sharing the vocals pretty evenly. While two of them played proper instruments, Mr Coca-Cola seemed to be a bit of a freeloader (despite his wonderful Elvis-esque vocals), playing only the tamborine for most of the night, until he got on the keyboard for a song or two near the end.

The drummer was pretty much the happiest band member I’ve ever seen, spending most of the show with a look of absolute glee on his face. I have no idea how he managed to do such a good job at drumming while keeping it up! On our way home afterwards, Lizzie and I felt compelled to get some Coca-Cola and ice from McDonalds, a very apt ending for the evening.

I’ll just get this out of the way now, so I don’t have to worry about it later: Vampire Weekend’s Ezra is… Well… Lizzie says beautiful, and I can’t very well disagree, to be perfectly honest. He’s pretty awesome, anyway.

Despite chucking Campus in a little early, ruining some of its potential (can’t blame them though, they don’t exactly have a large repertoire), they put on a lovely, bouncy, energetic show that can only increase my fondness for them. Finishing the main show with Oxford Comma, followed by an encore of Walcott, was absolutely brilliant, and I got out of the theatre with the intense desire to go to Cape Cod, and then leave it screaming the lyrics along with Ezra.

The only complaint I can put forth is that the keyboardist was officially the most boring band member ever; he just had a bored look on his face the entire time! Oh, and the distinct lack of fish gloves for A-Punk, of course!

If any of you get the chance to see either of these bands live, I can’t recommend the experience enough!