Vampire Weekend give Jakarta fans a special Holiday. Courtesy of Kawanku/Rizky

Hip New York-based indie bands like The National, Interpol and The Walkmen choose to wallow in the gray emotions associated with coming of age. The National recounts a steady 30-something lifestyle. The Walkmen portray the sinking feeling of the perpetual underdog. Interpol conveys downtown paranoia.

But Vampire Weekend plays the kind of music that would not belie their privileged upbringing. Vampire Weekend sings about nothing in particular.

The lyrics that guitar-playing vocalist Ezra Koenig writes consist mostly of one-liners put together to project giddy feelings about what it’s like to be an upper class New Yorker, about leaving Cape Cod because of boredom, drinking Mexican Horchata rum in December (probably in some Carribean island resort), walking past Richard Serra’s sculpture in downtown Manhattan or not giving a f@*k about an Oxford comma.

These guys went to Columbia University after all.

For their high society fetishes, music critic Julianne Shepherd of the Village Voice put the band in the now infamous category “Please Ignore This Band”. They called the band a deplorable group who emits the putrid stench of old money and old-guard high society.

It is easy to see that the sound that Vampire Weekend adopts to accompany the old money lyrics is the kind of breezy, whimsical pop cribbed from Graceland-era Paul Simon, who appropriated African polyrhythm and the Talking Heads — another New York band with a similar privileged background.

The most instantly recognizable feature of Vampire Weekend music — aside from Koenig’s average tenor — is the crisp guitar lines, indicating that he had taken an intensive guitar lesson while growing up, and the simple and infectious keyboard lines that multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij creates. These keyboard sounds are not merely an accoutrement to Vampire Weekend’s overall sound.

The band’s self-titled debut album, released in the winter of 2008, evokes the sun-drenched feeling that usually comes in late August when college kids start to reminisce about the soon-to-be-gone summer.

It was a summer record for winter people that quickly garnered rave reviews from respected critics.

Indie-minded publications embraced the record with hip tastemakers like Pitchfork giving it the seal of approval by naming it “Best New Record” and including it in the list of 100 best records
of the first decade of the “noughties”.

For their sophomore album, Contra, Vampire Weekend did away with the Afro-pop influence and went for more complicated arrangements, which owed more to Radiohead and female rebel rapper M.I.A. In fact, Vampire Weekend sampled the two musicians respectively on “Giving up the Gun” and “Diplomat’s Son”. This was a bold move for a band known for producing ear-candy tunes.

The hype from the first record barely subsided after before Vampire Weekend managed to once again stage a coup with Contra. The album shot to number one on the Billboard chart earlier this year (Vampire Weekend is on indie label XL) opening the way for another indie act, Arcade Fire, who scored the same feat six months later with The Suburbs.

The back-to-back successes of Vampire Weekend have made the band one of the hottest acts in rock, and it was certainly a triumph when late last week the four-piece band staged a gig at the Bengkel Night Park as part of their world tour. Kudos for promoter Trilogy Live for brining the band to Jakarta.

Jakarta fans certainly did not care what Koenig had to say about the Richard Serra sculpture, or his hobnobbing with a certain diplomat’s son. They only came for the band’s thin catalogue of music.

These fans were oblivious to lyrics about life in high society, but they certainly live in a bourgeoisie fantasy flaunting BlackBerries, smartphones, fancy clothing and chauffeured SUVs.

Well, coming to a Vampire Weekend show could very well be the ultimate bourgeoisie fantasy. And for more than 90 minutes, Vampire Weekend gave their Jakarta fans a chance to live in that fantasy. It is fitting that Koenig started the gig with Holiday, one of the up-tempo songs in Contra, which delves into the theme of, well, a holiday — getting away on a summer day and finding a private Republic on the beach.

For American fans of the band, Holiday could provide an escape from the recession, the widening gap between the Red and Blue states or the two wars that America will probably never win. But for fans in Jakarta, for the duration of the two-minute song they could forget about the worsening traffic jams or the possibility that Jakarta is sinking.

Fans went berserk, jumping up and down to the punk-inflected Holiday that opened the gig. Koenig was smart enough to start the show with the song, a non-single off Contra, which was upbeat enough to send fans jumping to the jittery beat.

The fans knew every single word — except for the California English when Koenig’s super rhyming was put into an Autotune mode.

Only a handful fans sung along with him, but the majority stood in awe, stunned by the speed with which Koenig delivered the lyrics while working his signature Gibson guitar. It was obvious that the guitar lessons Koenig took in his adolescent years paid off.

While it is easy for Koenig to steal the spotlight, the unsung hero of the Sunday night gig was Batmanglij, who provided much in the way of a melodic anchor for every composition.

Batmanglij, who wore a deadpanned expression throughout the show, was faithful to his keyboard, which was exactly what fans wanted. No one comes to a Vampire Weekend gig for a 20-minute piano solo.

In Walcott, one of Vampire Weekends most richly arranged songs, Batmanglij churned out sounds as diverse as opening staccato riffs, the faux Cello sound that bridged every chorus and the humming one-note sound — a backdrop to Koenig’s guitar licks. The genius of Batmanglij was that he did not appear to sweat. He is a one-man Vampire Weekend symphony.

But the presence of Batmanglij is also a painful reminder of the folly of Vampire Weekend’s music — and a validation of critiques from detractors who never liked Vampire Weekend in the first place and continue to hold a grudge against their shameless appropriation of indie sound.

Even the band’s best moment in the sun, with all the orchestral confetti and symphonic vibes, comes from an instrument as synthetic as electric piano.

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