The Cape I'm In

It’s nobody’s album of the decade – hell, it wasn’t even anyone’s album of the year when it was released back in January of 2008 – but for national treasure and all-round lovely bloke Neil Hannon, Vampire Weekend’s eponymous debut is one of the best pop albums in recent memory.

“A lot of people might think ‘Vampire Weekend? That’s not an old classic!’” he exclaims, “Well, I think it’s sort of a new classic! When it came out I heard one track on the radio and thought, ‘That’s pretty cool’, got the album and I was amazed. In fact, I just kept it on rotation for about three weeks. It does it for me on every level - stylistically, lyrically, melodically. They know when to stop, as well as when to start.”
I’m catching up with Hannon on a well-earned break from rehearsals with his makeshift supergroup, whose members include Jape’s Richie Egan, Romeo Stodart of the Magic Numbers and Hannon’s longtime collaborator and partner Cathy Davey.
“I was swayed by the idea,” he recalls. “Take your favourite album and get some of your favourite artists to help you perform it. What could be cooler? It was also an opportunity to take an album that maybe had been looked upon as just another young band overly-hyped and go, ‘No, actually listen to it, it’s fantastic!’ With these things you tend to have to do an awful lot of preparation. I wanted an album that I was prepared to listen to over and over again.”
This same format will be repeated in three cities in the UK over the next couple of weeks, but Dublin musos have clearly got the quirkier deal. In Glasgow, Sharleen Spiteri will be paying tribute to David Bowie, Tim Wheeler will be serving up tracks by the Pixies in London and Primal Scream’s Mani will be performing a selection of Smiths tunes in Manchester.
“The older albums that I would have done, I don’t think anyone would have greeted them with great joy,” Hannon argues. “I don’t think anyone needs another reworking of Kraftwerk. I’ll have to do my Left Bank tribute some other time!”
Today is one of just three days of rehearsal for Hannon and Co., but already there’s pixie dust in the air. I put it down to one very important detail, the great big looming chandelier hovering above the Button Factory stage, a nod to the album’s distinctive artwork.
“Everything is gelling together so well,” a very excited Richie Egan tells me. “This is awesome for me. I’ve never done four-part harmonies in my life before but when it works it sounds really nice. You have to stop yourself from saying, ‘Listen to this! It sounds amazing!”
The Jape and Redneck Manifesto whiz confesses that he hadn’t even heard the record before he signed up for the project.
“I just said, ‘Yeah’, because Neil and Cathy were involved!” he admits. “I’d only heard one or two of the singles, but to be able to actually get under the skin of the album is brilliant and discover that I’m really a Vampire Weekend fan!”
Magic Numbers crooner Stodd
art agrees that the prospect of making music with the chamber pop hero was the clincher.
“I’d known the singles and I really liked them, but I’d never fully lived with the album. But I really wanted to work with Neil, I’m a big admirer, so I was totally up for it. Then when I listened all the way through, I found that it was the first recent album that I really thought, ‘Wow!’”
Unlike the other three JD set overlords, Hannon has insisted that this album be performed in full and in chronological order. That means no shortcuts, no cheat sheets.
“I started working on the string arrangements about a week and a half ago, that’s given me a mild nervous breakdown,” he laughs. “We’re being remarkably faithful to the original, just because I can’t think of a way of improving it.”
“It’s such a perfect album from start to finish,” Egan adds. “It’s an amazing record and with our different vocal styles, that kind of changes it automatically.”
But to what extent can two Dubliners, a Derry native and a certified nomad (Stodart was born in the Caribbean, and lived in New York before settling in London) identify with this Ivy League lifestyle they’ll be singing about?
“Generally, I’m thinking about Cape Cod, Long Island,” Hannon trails, “but then it also veers off on weird tangents and occasionally, sweary bitchiness. But I haven’t been going on the internet to find out what he was talking about, or anything.”
Hannon’s right, that’s quite enough intellectualising for one afternoon. By now, I’m itching to hear how it sounds, so I take up a spot at the empty bar and watch the foursome shuffle back into position. Stodart glides through the opening riff of ‘Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa’ and though we’re only a couple of seconds in, the Temple Bar venue might as well be a beach house in New Jersey. As the tune clangs to a climax, I’m shocked at how fresh and vibrant it all sounds.
So, maybe Hannon’s choice of album isn’t so arbitrary after all. This record was made 3,000 miles from here, by a group of strapping twentynothings with Hollywood smiles, but the character running through it is so potent, it seems like anyone can jump on board the Vampire Weekend bandwagon. So crazy, it works.

The JD Set 2011 will take place in The Button Factory, Dublin on April 1. See www.thejdset.ie for tickets.