New Vampire Weekend - "Ladies of Cambridge" (Live on MySpace Transmissions)

MySpace has a video series called Transmissions, in which bands play their music and are interviewed in a comfortable setting. The concept isn't anything new, but, hey, the more, the merrier, right? Right. The band that stopped by most recently was Vampire Weekend, who not only performed three songs from their eponymous debut album, but also performed a "new" song called "Ladies of Cambridge." Why the quotation marks? Because "Ladies of Cambridge" is really, in fact, "Boston" from the Blue CD-R demo that made the internet rounds. Still, it's new material to someone out there. As for the song itself, "Cambridge" is a little more upbeat and ska-influenced than their other songs, but still has that combination of effortless, breezy melodicism and utterly irritating quirks-for-the-sake-of-quirks (Ezra Koenig's vocal inflections make me want to punch myself in the head repeatedly).

Watch the video for "Ladies of Cambridge" at the top of the post. Listen and watch the rest of Transmissions here.

Vampire Weekend MySpace Page

(Jonathan Graef)