Vampire Weekend have spent an impressive amount of this past year on the road. Following the release of their fourth studio album Father of the Bride in May, the band set out on a lengthy stretch of tour dates throughout North America and Europe, followed by announcement of even more tour stops planned for 2020.
In the wake of their recent run through Mexico, with dates in Monterrey and Mexico City, the band brought their Father of the Bride fanfare to Austin City Limits, where they performed a career-spanning, 10-song set live on the PBS program. Scattered between FotB cuts like “This Life,” “2021,” “Sympathy,” “Bambina,” and “Jerusalem, New York, Berlin,” Ezra Koenig and co. brought back a few fan favorites from earlier in their career including Contra‘s “White Sky” and Vampire Weekend‘s “A-Punk.”
In an unusual turn of events, the band also performed “New Dorp. New York,” Ezra Koenig’s 2014 collaboration with electronic producer SBTRKT. The track works surprisingly well in the context of their more eclectic, dance-leaning recent album, which itself is a bit of a sprawling mess of a release, especially for a band once so committed to asceticism.
Vampire Weekend’s fourth studio album Father of the Bride was released on May 3, 2019 via Spring Snow/Columbia Records/Sony Music Entertainment. Last month, the band brought their FotB song “Sympathy” to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where they performed for a live studio audience. Check out their Austin City Limits performance below and revisit our review of their latest album here.
