Vampire Weekend @ the Riviera - 4/26/10

First time I've seen them live, and they pretty much lived up to the hype. It might have been the few beers beforehand, but this was a really easy show to get into. A nice thing about Vampire Weekend is that they've only got two records, and most of their songs are short, so they can play a pretty full set that covers virtually all of their album material. They played the entire new album, except for Giving Up the Gun (surprising, since that's a new single), and and I Think Ur a Contra. They played the entire first album except The Kids Don't Stand a Chance. They also threw in Ladies of Cambridge, a b-side from the Oxford Comma single.

This was only the second time I've been to the show at the Riviera (first show was Spoon about two and a half years ago). It's a little bigger venue than I normally frequent. It's got a capacity of about 2,500 people, about 10-15 times the size of a place like Schuba's, which is a bit more up my alley. But the acoustics at the Riv are excellent, so it's hard to complain. We skipped Abe Vigoda, who opened (a band on my radar that I haven't gotten around to yet), and by the time we got in, the venue was fairly full, so visuals weren't easy to come by. But compared to my companion/date, who is about 5'3", I had it pretty easy.