The dust has settled on another successful edition of the Falls Festival, including the newly expanded Byron Bay leg (with organisers eyeing a further expansion), but Vampire Weekend nearly had a very rough New Year’s following an incident involving a flare during their headlining set.
The New York indie four-piece had the honours of ringing in 2014 at the Lorne leg of the festival, but after returning back onstage following the countdown, Vampire Weekend bassist Chris Baio was nearly struck with a live flare that was pelted from the crowd.
The rogue flare narrowly missed Baio, who was unharmed, while the band didn’t miss a beat of their performance of ‘A-Punk’ (from their eponymous 2008 debut album) but stage crew took time to extinguish the flare as it got tangled in equipment on the Falls main stage.
Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig and drummer Chris Thompson were good humoured about the dangerous affair when they spoke with Triple J this week.
“The conspiracy is that someone tried to kill Baio,” Koenig joked to Triple J Drive hosts Veronica and Lewis.
“We’ve seen multiple camera angles, and we’re slowly piecing it together,” added Thompson. “Someone lit a flare and threw it straight out into the crowd, and it hit someone in the head. Then you see that person pick it up and hurl it directly at Baio,” says the drummer.
“It missed Baio, fortunately, and it landed in a tangle of wires,” he continued. “And then they wasted a whole fire extinguisher on it, but because it’s a flare it wouldn’t go out. Then our badass guitar tech Andre reached in and grabbed it, and put it in a champagne bottle.”
Luckily the scene wasn’t as bad as the similar incident that occurred during Soundwave Festival in 2013 in which members of the crowd sustained minor injuries from a magnesium flare set off during a set from Bring Me The Horizon. Fan footage of the incident has surfaced online with the flare making an appearance at the 1:45 minute mark.
Vampire Weekend’s New Year’s set was “nothing short of magical,” according to our Tone Deaf reviewer, “the perfect start to 2014,” and the quartet gleaned similarly glowing reviews for their Falls sets at Marion Bay and Byron Bay.
Their “signature combination of afro-pop licks, peppy rhythms, and literary lyrics… definitely deserved the headlining spot by showcasing a newfound maturity and versatility,” enthused our Tone Deaf scribe at the inaugural Byron leg.
The band were in Australia for the first time since releasing their third studio album, last year’s Modern Vampires of the City, and Ezra Koenig tells Triple J that writing material for a follow-up is high on the band’s New Year’s resolution.
“We want to have a new sound on every album we make,” Koenig said, indicating a change of sonic direction for record #4.
“For a variety of reasons we all saw the first three albums as kind of connected. Looking back, I see a lot of the same characters and the same voices, and I think there’s a reason that trilogies are more popular than quadrologies or quintologies,” he continued.
“So whatever happens next will be interesting. We’re just as curious as our fans to see what happens next. It could be another trilogy, it could be a prequel. It could be a gritty reboot,” he speculates. “That would be funny. All the same songs with a gravelly voice.”
Check out our Falls Festival 2013 coverage below.
Falls Festival Lorne
Review: Day One & Two | Day Three & Four
Photo Gallery: Day One | Day Two | Day Three | Day Four
Falls Festival Byron Bay
Review: Day One | Day Two | Day Three
Photo Gallery: Day One | Day Two | Day Three | Day Four
Falls Festival Marion Bay
Photo Gallery: Day One | Day Two | Day Three
