Vampire Weekend returned to Saturday Night Live last night to serve their third stint as the shows musical guests, just in time to promote their new album, Modern Vampires of the City.
Vampire Weekend Pair with Steve Buscemi for Live Concert Webcast
The band started off with the hard-driving rockabilly-and-synth rhythms of Diane Young, the lead single off the record, as a gentleman in a top hat played a giant bari sax against Ezra Koenigs pitch-shifting vocals. They returned for the second set with Unbelievers, also from the new album, opening with an Elvis Costello-esque organ riff and filling the sound out near the end with a brass and wind quartet.
Things that we might have found boring in the past, weve started to find more fresh, Koenig told Rolling Stonein January, as the album neared completion. This record has more piano and acoustic guitar and organ. But at the same time, that means we needed to find ways to flip it. Modern Vampires of the City,Vampire Weekends third album, is due out on May 14th.