Saturday Night Live: Vampire Weekend performs ‘Gen-X Cops’
Vampire Weekend was the musical guest for Saturday Night Live this weekend, so what did they choose to bring to the table?
Sometimes with performers on this show, there is a certain amount of venturing into the great unknown. That isn’t what we had here in the slightest. Instead, we are talking here about someone who has been a part of the series before and by virtue of that, there is a certain expectation as to what you’re going to get.
For the first performance, the band kicked things off with “Gen-X Cops,” a notable song from their new album Only God Was Above Us. Like with many other musical guests who have graced SNL over the years, the group was there right around the time they had new music to promote. If you haven’t heard much of this album yet, it does have a certain vibe that is nostalgic, reflective, and yet also forward-facing at the same time. That is not an easy thing to pull off much of the time and yet, they find a way to do it. This song in particular has some echoes of Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service.
For those viewers out there who may not be regular Vampire Weekend listeners, this is the sort of track that shows them at their best in this particular era of their musical journey.
As for the second song…
A little bit later on in the show, the group returned with “Capricorn,” a song that certainly was different in style and pace from the earlier number. This one had more of a Beatles-meets-Oasis sentiment behind it, while also featuring some gorgeous instrumentation.
Hearing this may just be another example of our frustrations with the modern music industries, one where rock somehow seems to be going further away from the mainstream and there are fewer and fewer traditional bands front and center.
What did you think about the Vampire Weekend performance on Saturday Night Live tonight?
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