Vampire Weekend Show Support for Phish, Phillies at ACL

It's been no secret that Vampire Weekend's drummer Chris Tomson has a love for Vermont jam kings Phish -- and he seemed to relish the opportunity that his band had one of the last slots to play before Phish at this year's Austin City Limits. As he did on 'Saturday Night Live,' Tomsom donned his maroon Phish shirt that was written in Philadelphia Phillies script, timely attire for this fall, as the baseball playoffs are in full swing and Vampire Weekend was serving as Phish's unofficial opening act.

If you thought about it for a second -- and we're not sure the 15,000 or so that showed up for Vampire Weekend's set did -- their songs certainly have a heavy Phish slant to them. Sure, the well publicized afro-pop is there, but if you closed your eyes and thought about Vermont, 'Cousins' and 'Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa' have that rhythmic element that Phish staples 'Yamar' or 'Bouncing Around the Room' contain.

Vampire Weekend's popularity makes it so they don't have to do much to please crowds of this size. Uptempo songs like 'Holiday' and 'I Stand Corrected' balance out the spacier moments they like to slip in these days, which are where this band has become interesting over the years. Towards the end of the set, they pulled out 'I Think UR a Contra,' against an ocean blue backdrop, where Koenig dribbled out the lyrics in one of the day's more ethereal moments, another possible homage to the jams that were about to take flight across the field. Sadly, there were no baseball predictions.

Vampire Weekend's 'Contra' tour continues through the rest of year in the U.S. and Europe, where they're sharing bills with the Arcade Fire, Beach House, the Very Best, Jenny & Johnny and Ratatat.

Watch the band perform 'Horchata' at last night's show below.