I’ll start with the negative: seeing a Vampire Weekend show made me feel old.

And that’s really the only thing I found disappointing about the show.  I’m not one to focus on the negative, but I also won’t go out of my way to defend the performances of bands whose music I like if they happen to suck it up on stage.  There were a few things to criticize about this show, most notably the technical issues that plagued the band, but I ended up quite impressed Vampire Weekend, in spite of the mega-hype that’s always impossible to live up to, and in spite of feeling like a crotchety old geezer by the end of their performance.

The Wiltern has been host to some good times for me.  My favorite show of 2007 took place there – The National – and at the latest Explosions in the Sky concert I was fortunate enough to encounter the Friday Night Lights goddess Minka Kelly.  The pounded brass decorations that line the roof and walls of the theater give it a vaguely Egyptian feeling, the lighting and acoustics are reliably good, and it’s surprisingly easy to get to, especially if you’re willing to ride the bus or the Metro subway.

We arrived just in time to hear the last song of the first opening act, Abe Vigoda, and from what I heard they sounded just awful.  They were followed by Oh Look at Us We’re So Experimental (my bad, they’re actually called White Williams), a happy hardcore dream power-pop clockgazer band fronted by Cleveland-based Joe Williams.  Their music sort of felt like it belonged at a rave, in that it had the capacity to become tiresome very quickly.  It wasn’t necessarily bad, but it didn’t really put me in the mood to do anything – dance, drink, sleep, do drugs, nothing.  For such uninspiring music, it just seemed like a massively overwrought performance – like an auditory version of Spirograph. (more…)