Far from being low-brow, black-attired spooks bleeding the life out of the tired shlock-horror genre, Vampire Weekend are a Brooklyn-based quartet of well-read Ivy League students who wear their literary passions and eclectic tastes on their preppy shirt sleeves. Their style is "Upper West Side Soweto", a palate-cleansing blend of wordy, melodic pop, vibrant African rhythms, post-punk, ska and classical strings. Their eponymous album is released in the UK next week, and despite this being, as singer and guitarist Ezra Koenig points out, only their fourth gig in London, they are welcomed like returning heroes by the heaving crowd.
The band's first single, Mansard Roof, is proof why. The clipped drums and soft, prodding keyboards turn into a snaking dance tune that together with Koenig's vocals sounds like Graceland-era Paul Simon jamming with the Police, burning briefly but brightly and igniting a carnival atmosphere.
Despite the maturity of their music, the band sing about what they know, from fumbling freshers in Campus to the M79 bus route in New York, throwing in sublime hooks, poetic gasps and references to sex, drugs and Peter Gabriel along the way. Their songs are immediate and fun, their attitude refreshing. There's none of Damon Albarn's crusading spirit, but no hint that their love of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, evident in Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa, is a convenient lilypad to success. Vampire Weekend are too clever for that, their passions too diverse. A-Punk sounds like the Specials stomping with Talking Heads, while new song Little Giant could be the Beach Boys playing calypso in a New York bistro.
Koenig sings with puppy-dog eyes and raised brows, and initiates a singalong on One (Blake's Got a New Face), but all too soon it's over. "Our repetoire is expanding every day, but it still takes time," he says. However, encouraged by the crowd's "positive energy", a blistering encore of Walcott ensures everyone leaves bitten by the Vampire Weekend bug.
· At Astoria 2, London, tonight. Box office: 020-7434 9592.
