Vampire Weekend, SSE Hydro, Glasgow

Facing a cavernous new venue, Glasgow’s SSE Hydro, one could be forgiven for expecting Vampire Weekend to balk at the challenges provided by these new heights. However, the surprising effect that this mammoth has is not on the band, but on the crowd. While Ezra Koenig and the rest of Vampire Weekend remain effortlessly cool throughout their biggest Scottish performance yet, the crowd are strangely muted and uninspired in their support of such antics.

While they’re by no means silent, and in fact display their enthusiasm repeatedly during the more pacier songs, it’s left to the band themselves to consistently attempt to spark the crowd into life. It’s testament to their quality then to say that they do in fact manage it on a few occasions: hits like ‘A-Punk’ and set opener ‘Diane Young’ inspire a raucous response as expected, the audience are also drawn out of their shells for deeper cuts like ‘Horchata’ and ‘Campus’ too. Though the atmosphere is often one of slight ambivalence, the ability to bring even these tougher crowds back from the dead shows that Vampire Weekend do belong in a venue of the Hydro’s magnitude. Although bands are often reliant on their audience to feed their enthusiasm, despite it only coming sporadically in Glasgow tonight they are still able to put on a fantastic show.