"You find us in a period of transition," says Vampire Weekend's frontman Ezra Koenig. He sounds slightly nervous – perhaps with good reason. For one thing, the audience is crammed into a tiny fourth-floor student union bar. The venue is so intimate that not only can you examine bass player Chris Baio's remarkable dancing up close (he seems to have hit on a unique style that marries the frantic postpunk bendy-leg shuffle popularised by the guitarist from Fine Young Cannibals to dramatic Ministry of Silly Walks strides), but actually hear the unamplified thwack of his plectrum hitting the strings.
Vampire Weekend are at a difficult juncture in their career. The speed with which rock music is consumed these days demands that bands arrive apparently perfectly formed: sound, image and backstory all in place. Vampire Weekend did just that, with their preppy clothes and their Congolese soukous-influenced guitars and their clever songs about romantic entanglements among the Waspy residents of Ivy League campuses. But if you're already perfectly formed, it's a tough call to evolve: hence the preponderance of careers that nosedive around the second album (and Vampire Weekend's is due in January).
That said, the new songs debuted tonight imply that they might well have pulled it off. They sound a little tentative compared to those from their eponymous debut, the latter toughened by almost two years of touring: M79 is stripped of its prissy string arrangement while, thrillingly, Campus lurches without a pause into a slowed-down, surprisingly intense version of Oxford Comma. But there are clearly new ideas on offer. The weird stop-start atmospherics of Horchata and the frantic scrabbling of Cousins give the impression of a hip indie band doing the one thing hip indie bands have struggled to do in recent years: develop.
