Midway through Vampire Weekend ‘s night at the Hollywood Bowl on Wednesday, singer-guitarist Ezra Koenig paused to remind, or perhaps inform, fans in the packed amphitheater of the night’s special theme. “Now some of you may be aware, and some of you may not be, but it’s ska night at the Hollywood Bowl,” Koenig said, noting that opening acts the English Beat and Voodoo Glow Skulls are bands that had influenced his band from the start. “So there’s actually a bit of ska in Vampire Weekend,” he continued.
“It’s one of the 17 secret ingredients in our proprietary Vampire Weekend recipe.” All of this – said quite seriously, but also with a sense of humor – served to introduce the next song in the set, a ska-tified version of Vampire Weekend’s own “Ottoman,” renamed “Skattoman” for the night. In many ways that spoke to what makes Vampire Weekend such a delight on stage.
For as sincerely as Vampire Weekend takes its music on the albums, there’s often a silly sense of fun that surfaces on stage to make memories ever more endearing. (This is a band, after all, who at Coachella this year brought out both Paris Hilton and a guy dressed as Abraham Lincoln to play cornhole on stage with them.) On Wednesday, the show opened intimately, with Koenig, bassist Chris Baio and drummer Chris Tomson, alone on stage, playing stripped-down versions of “Holiday,” “Cousins,” and “Boston (Ladies of Cambridge,” early songs from its 2008 self-titled debut.
