popwreckoning

Bundled in hoodies and clutching blankets, Kansas City huddled together for one of the last outdoor concerts of the season at Starlight Theatre. Fortunately for these human popsicles, the live music they were about to witness is some of the most summery, heart-warmingly effervescent tunes a person could hope to hear.

DJ/MC combo act The Very Best had first warm-up duties, and warm the crowd up they did. This group made waves for their remixes of popular artists and blending those mixes with the honeylike vocals of MC Esau Mwamwaya. Their music tonight was their original tunes from their debut LP which includes the globally acclaimed “Warm Heart of Africa.” The recorded version of this features Vampire Weekend’s front man, Ezra Koenig. The audience didn’t seem to mind that they didn’t recognize what Esau was saying as the jubilant singer belted out songs in his native tongue of Chichewa. Everyone was eager to embrace this underdog act.

by Scott Spychalski

by Scott Spychalski

The weather got chillier as the musical vibe also cooled down for indie act Beach House. The piano duo was accompanied by a few more musicians than what I’ve usually seen them tour with. Enshrouded in blue lights and backlit by glowing pyramids, the group lightly pounded piano chords and ‘ah ha ha ha-ed’ through their set. It wasn’t as exuberant as their the music of their tour mates, but it demanded attention. The audience sat entranced as Beach House played through “Norway,” “10 Mile Stereo” and other popular blog hits. There was less moving and dancing, but the audience was too enraptured to feel cold.

After a long set change, the happy  lads in Vampire Weekend triumphantly took center stage…and triumphantly is not an exaggeration. They walked to epic entrance music with arms raised as the audience roared in excitement. Then without further delay they jumped into “Holiday.” Never have I ever seen an audience so into a set from start to finish as this Vampire Weekend show. There was jumping, dancing in aisles and even spirit fingers. For an entire song, Vampire Weekend convinced the audience to do spirit fingers.

The happiness was contagious. Vampire Weekend played through just about anything you’d want to hear from their two-disc catalogue. From the chandeliers synced with the snare, to the fancy footwork of the band, to the impressive vocal range of Koenig, to the blisteringly fast fingers of Rostam Batmanglij over the piano, and then even to a nice twist on a Bruce Springsteen cover, Vampire Weekend played a nearly perfect concert.

There was one weird moment when the band started to play single, “Giving Up the Gun,” but then suddenly stopped and said that it wasn’t feeling right. Now, normally, bands either push through or restart the song, but they just completely gave up on ‘The Gun.” Weird. While Kansas City would have rioted against any other band, the only thing that really upset the audience was when Koenig made the common faux pas of saying he was in Kansas when in actuality, he was in Kansas City, MO. Come now, Koenig, you went to Columbia. You should know your geography a little better than that.

Nonetheless, even with the cold, everyone had warm fuzzies by the end of this show and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone disappointed with Vampire Weekend’s debut Kansas City performance.

Set List:
Holiday
White Sky
Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
I Stand Corrected
M79
Bryn
California English
Cousins
Taxi Cab
Run
A-Punk
Blake’s Got a New Face
I’m Goin Down (Springsteen cover)
Diplomat’s Son
I Think Ur a Contra
Giving Up the Gun (very briefly)
Campus Oxford Comma
//
Horchata
Mansard Roof
Wolcott

The Very Best recently premiered this video for the “Warm Heart of Africa” featuring Vampire Weekend‘s Ezra Koenig.

This video is great and this song is great. It  will be stuck in your head all day. Trust us.

“Do you know what ‘moto’ means?” singer Esau Mwamwaya of the Very Best asked the crowd at DC9 Monday night. (I presume he was asking if we knew what it meant in his native Chichewa, the national language of his homeland, Malawi.) The crowd, smiling back at him, collectively shook their heads. “It means ‘fire’!” Funny you mention something incendiary, Esau, because on a cold Monday night in Washington, the “band” from London figuratively lit a fire under the audience at the sold-out DC9 with their brand of African tinged dance music and turned the club into an all-out dance party.

The opener for the night was the Brooklyn-based duo Javelin. Not sure where they got their name – maybe cousins Tom Van Buskirk and George Langford were good at track and field in high school? These days, I imagine the two must be flexing their muscles carrying all their gear around – a whole table full of electronics including several synths and a drum pad, colorfully painted boomboxes they call “boombaatas” that form large speaker totems, and a collection of maracas and cowbells.

Javelin’s brief but entertaining set of pop / hip hop / electronic music at times lifted lyrics from songs of days gone by like Mariah Carey‘s “Fantasy.” Another example: they commandeered the words from the children’s lullaby “Frere Jacques” and turned into something completely different. Who would have guessed that song could ever be so dancey? And with humorous song titles like “Lindsay Brohan” and “Soda Popinski,” you’d have to smile. My faves from the set were “Twyce” and “Vibrationz,” the latter name-checking Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and Marky Mark (aka Mark Wahlberg when he was a singer way back when). If you’re going to name your song “Vibrationz,” it’s totally appropriate to give a nod to the only two songs from popular culture that also mention such scandalous quivering.

The Very Best is a trio comprised of singer Mwamwaya and the London-based DJ/production duo of Radioclit (Swede Johan Carlberg and Frenchman Etienne [DJ] Tron). I first became aware of them when the title track of their first official full-length album, “Warm Heart of Africa”, was added to the BBC 6music playlist. The song was an instant hit with me, buoyed by the gaiety of vocals from Mwamwaya and guest Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend (who incidentally also cowrote the song) and joyous instrumentation. I was a little skeptical how this live exhibition would turn out when Carlberg first came onstage and immediately broke out a large album full of CDs and popped a disc into his Philips player. Thankfully though, my uncertainty quickly dissolved as the band got going.

For the live performance, singer Mwamwaya alternately stood, danced, and interacted with fans directly in front of Carlberg, who played DJ and assumed additional audience warm-up duty for the evening, waving his arms back and forth vigorously to get the crowd going during songs. For added oomph, they even brought with them two energetic dancers, resplendent in jackets that read “TVB” on the back; Mwamwaya proudly announced that the girls had come “all the way from the UK!” “Julia” and “Warm Heart of Africa” from their official first album were warmly received. So was “Tengazako,” a track from their 2008 free-to-download mixtape that featured an obvious sample from M.I.A., causing everyone in the club to do the gun-toting moves that I have only recently learned are requisite when hearing her “Paper Planes.”

Generally, you can expect a headlining act to play for a significantly longer period of time than their opener. Unfortunately for those of us gathered to see this band at DC9, this wasn’t the case. The two of them were clearly not prepared for such a lively reaction from their Washington area adoring fans and as such weren’t equipped to do more than the eight songs they played us. At the tail end of their set, Carlberg asked the audience what song they wanted, and after some random shouts and murmurings, it was decided that the Very Best’s cover version of Vampire Weekend‘s “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” would be the tune. After Mwamwaya left the stage, (the crowd didn’t want to let him go), Carlberg stayed behind to spin records, and the audience continued dancing to the pulsating beats on offer. I think if they keep this up, the Very Best could very well be the next global phenomenon.

The Very Best: myspace
Javelin: website | myspace