Wednesday 9.15
Vampire Weekend @ Radio City Music Hall
1260 Sixth Ave. 8 p.m. $39.50. 866-858-0008. (Through Sept. 17)
Vampire Weekend – White Sky [audio:WhiteSky.mp3]
Vampire Weekend make the kind of music you’d expect four Columbia University grads to put together. It’s crisp, succinct, upper-class sounding. It’s what you’d expect to hear at the cocktail hour for a wedding at the Montauk Yacht Club. It draws heavily from afro-pop, a genre at first you’d think one of the band’s four members discovered while digging through an Upper West Side used-CD store, but then, after hearing songs about the Oxford comma and going on holiday and dance rhythms from the Congo, you start to think no, they probably discovered it while on a safari in the Serengeti. And while the sound of lead vocalist Ezra Koenig’s guitar and Rostam Batmanglij’s keyboard sound so clean it’s as if the shrink wrap is still on their instruments, none of this is to say Vampire Weekend’s music is elitist. Rather, it’s 100 percent accessible and enjoyable, like visiting your preppy cousin at their Ivy League college for the weekend. Or, in the case of VW’s multi-show stint at Radio City Music Hall, three days of popped collars, boat shoes and caviar.
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