Back in town for the first of two nights at the Paramount to make up for their sudden cancellation at Marrymoor last month, Vampire Weekend were appropriately apologetic and gracious last night. "It's not a Sunday in the Park," said singer/guitarist Ezra Koenig, "but thanks for being here....we can pretend it's a nice summer day."

The stage set-up was pretty great. On the wall behind the band was a big circular, chart-like mandala with text of the lyrics to "White Sky"; for some reason (the line work? the font?) it looked like something out of an issue of the Believer. My eye landed on the word "lunch" in one of the circle's inner rings, and it struck me what a weird, lumpy word that was to be at the center of such an airy, effervescent song. For some slower songs, "Taxi Cab" and I think "I Think UR a Contra," the lines of a map, depicting the "Port of Contra," were projected over the circle in blue. For other songs, chandeliers descended over the band, lighting up and dangling up and down at various heights, like the album cover of their debut come to life in multiple.

The band directed call-and-response on a few songs and encouraged dancing, but Koenig always added a deferential, "do whatever you want"; these were polite suggestions, not demands. On a couple songs, Rostam Batmanglij would hold a single keyboard note so long that it began to resemble a drone of feedback; on "Horchata," he did this in addition to abandoning the album version's wonderfully plinky, chintzy marimba melody, which sucked some of the joy out of the song. On "California English," Koenig fumbled out an odd little tentative four-note anti-solo. Mostly, though, everything sounded fantastic. Chris Baio bowed an upright bass on "Taxi Cab" as Batmanglij's harpsichord part spooled just slightly out of control. The four-note bass synth at the end of "Giving Up the Gun" sounded huge on the Paramount's system, like the band had hidden a big dubstep part in the song this whole time. They smoothly shifted straight from "Campus" into the equally academic "Oxford Comma" (whose lines about authenticity and "why would you lie about something dumb like that" are still some of the sharpest and most genuinely affecting the band has written).

Koenig explained that they usually don't play "The Kids Don't Stand a Chance," but that somebody requested it via Twitter, saying that the band owed Seattle, and Koenig conceded they were right. He explained that they only recently started playing "I Think UR a Contra" live, and its Seattle debut sounded perfectly sweet. They played a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "I'm Going Down," which kind of makes sense: Koenig and Springsteen are both from New Jersey, only Koenig doesn't pretend he's working class. Some sweaty guy in the crowd who was waving around both the band's albums shouted out the band's alma mater, "Columbia!" A girl with a sign reading, "GO ON" ran onstage after "Giving up the Gun" and managed to get hugs out of Batmanglij and Koenig. "Good for her," said Koenig. "It's not easy to make it onstage." Rostam played guitar hopping around with a big, open mouthed smile, looking like the happiest guy onstage. Baio did a little backwards-walking, low shoulder swinging skank to the more swinging bass parts.

Koenig apologized and thanked the crowd again. "I don't want to apologize too many times," he said, "so, I'll say thank you. We couldn't ask for anything better than for you guys to give us a second chance...and then plus to get to play with Seattle's own the Head and the Heart"—more about them here—"We'll never give you the run-around again." The sweaty Columbia guy shouted, "You're forgiven!" On the walk back up the hill, a chorus of teenage girls serenaded each other with "Walcott," the band's place-specific but sentimentally universal closing song: "don't you know that it's insane/don't you wanna get out of Cape Cod/out of Cape Cod tonight?"

Set list:
"Holiday"
"White Sky"
"Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa"
"I Stand Corrected"
"M79"
"Bryn"
"California English"
"Cousins"
"Taxi Cab"
"Run"
"A-Punk"
"One (Blake's Got a New Face)"
"I'm Going Down" (Bruce Springsteen cover)
"Diplomat's Son"
"I Think UR a Contra"
"Giving Up the Gun"
"Campus"
"Oxford Comma"

Encore
"Horchata"
"The Kids Don't Stand a Chance"
"Mansard Roof"
"Walcott"

Photos by Josh Bis; more after the jump