I thought I’d nearly run out of nice things to say about Vampire Weekend as a festival band after seeing them earlier this year at Sasquatch and Outside Lands, but the band played the best set I’ve seen from them at FreeFest. At the other festivals they never got that headliner slot, but here they took full advantage of the position. Thousands of people stuck through all the unpleasant weather during the day, and most of them were in the pouring rain and mud during this show, yet as soon as that opening riff of “Cousins” rang out, none of that seemed to matter. I watched the crowd more than the band for this performance, looking across the packed seats of Merriweather Post Pavilion at the thousands of fans singing along to every song, not to mention countless more on the wet, ruined lawn, and for those 90 minutes, everything felt almost indescribably warm and bright and beautiful