Vampire Weekend and Danielle Haim joined forces at 2018 Fuji Rock Festival in Yuzawa, Japan, for a rousing cover of the Thin Lizzy classic “The Boys Are Back in Town,” Pitchfork reports. The performance, Noisey reports, closed Vampire Weekend’s set last Saturday night and featured Haim and singer Ezra Koenig alternating verses.
The original was released in 1976 on Lizzy’s seminal record Jailbreak. Guitarist Scott Gorham remembers the surprise hit brought success to the stagnating LP, saying, “We’d demoed maybe 15 songs and ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’ wasn’t among the ten that we chose for the album, which in some ways made it a double surprise. We owe it all to two DJs in Louisville, Kentucky. They fell in love with the fucking song and played it incessantly until other stations in the surrounding area picked up on it… Had that song not kickstarted the sales of the album, then the band was over.”
Vampire Weekend are currently working on the follow-up to their 2013 record, Modern Vampires in the City. Earlier this year, singer Ezra Koenig revealed via his personal Facebook account the new album was “94.5%” finished and the record was “sizeable.” The group are currently on tour with upcoming performances at Lollapalooza in Chicago and End of the Road Festival in the UK.
Haim released their sophomore effort, Something to Tell You, in 2017 and have been touring in support of the record. During an interview with iHeartRadio, Danielle describes the writing process for the record, saying, “We spent a couple months writing the songs. We kept writing throughout the process, but we spent the first four to five months just writing and working on song arrangements. And then for the next year we were just recording them as a band.”
Watch Danielle Haim prep for her cover of “The Boys Are Back in Town” followed by the Thin Lizzy original below.
Photo Credit: Sharon Alagna
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