Vampire Weekend returned to NBC’s Saturday Night Live last night (May 11) for the first time since 2013, performing two songs from their new album, Only God Was Above Us. For “Gen-X Cops” and “Capricorn,” the trio of Ezra Koenig, Chris Baio and and Chris Tomson were augmented on lead guitar by Ariel Rechtshaid, who produced Only God as well as Vampire Weekend’s two prior albums in 2013 and 2019.
Koenig, Baio and Tomson got further into the New York spirit during the show’s goodbye segment, with each wearing a Knicks, Nets and Rangers shirt, respectively. The episode was hosted by Maya Rudolph, who revisited her earlier “Beyoncé appearing on Hot Ones” bit and even recited a lyric or two from M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” during a pre-taped skit.
Vampire Weekend will play one-off shows later this month in Luton, U.K., and at the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona, before kicking off a summer North American tour June 6 in Houston. The band “carefully curated” the eclectic roster of tour opening acts, some of whom “hold local significance” to their given cities: LA LOM, the English Beat, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Phish’s Mike Gordon, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Ra Ra Riot, Cults, the Billy Joel tribute combo Turnstiles, the Brothers Macklovitch and Mark Ronson, who will DJ as opposed to performing with a band.
In addition, Rudolph and Gretchen Lieberum’s Prince cover band Princess will support for two gigs in the Chicago area on July 26-27.
