Un week-end de vampires

No, my weekend was neither spooky, nor a horror film, nor anything to do with Twilight (please, pop culture, can we find some other books to be obsessed with???).

As you may have guessed, I went to see these guys.

They were adorable, endearing and as East-Coast as you’d expect them to be, except they actually seemed like guys you would want to hang out with. Also, they rocked the intimate and antique La Cigale pretty hard. La Cigale reminded me a lot of Chapin Auditorium at Mount Holyoke where I saw M.I.A. last year. I’ve decided from now on, I will only see rock music in such decidedly anachronistic settings.

Vampire Weekend may be young, but they know how to put on a show. Everything was perfectly timed from opening with “Mansford Roof” to the energetic “A-Punk” which kicked off the second half of the show – this, after bass-related technical difficulties tried to derail things, although Ezra Koenig and co. dealt with it pretty well. They encored with “Ça plane pour moi,” a song in French that seemed to be a crowd-pleaser (through the magique of YouTube you can watch it here...except we were way closer than this) and everyone’s favorite: “Walcott” (I mean…). Koenig endearingly thanked the crowd after each song with an incredibly twee “Merci,” and he and the keyboardist had either memorized a few key French phrases or dug up their French knowledge from their days at Columbia to banter in French as much as in English between songs.

It was all too cute. Plus, the opening French band was incroyablement mignon [incredibly cute]. Their combined age couldn’t have been much over 50, but their jangly guitars and moody tunes showed a surprising skill and knowledge of the 80s post-punk era (or, more likely the post-punk revival movement of the early 2000s, particularly à l’Interpol, selon moi [in my opinion]).

<------ Twelve-year-olds

I also saw Quantum of Solace this weekend, which is not even out in the states yet – take that! It must be said that Daniel Craig kicks ass. And, French people don’t seem to understand the humour of Bond.