When Vampire Weekend made their first Brighton appearance at Audio in February last year, they were to most an unknown quantity, their pressed shirts as box fresh as their debut album.

Fast forward to August 2009 and the New York preps have a sold-out Concorde 2 bellowing along to their every lyric. The band are so relaxed they’ve even gone as far as to undo their top buttons.

The link in the two pictures is of course their self-titled debut, a sparkling, singalong fusion of classical music, Strokes-style rhythms and Afro-pop that soundtracked last summer and had us casually namedropping Congolese soukous music like we’d known what it was all along.

The follow-up is set for release early next year but, for now, the band stick the winning formula. From the opening Mansard Roof, which will one day sit in an archive of rare songs inspired by architecture, to yelping, driving closer Walcott, this set was, for the main, a faithful rendition of the album – all puppyish guitars, caffeinated heartbeat drums and shiny, joyful keyboard harmonies reminiscent of a Lion King song written in the 1980s.

There were no duff tracks; I Stand Corrected is dizzyingly engaging; Oxford Comma was playful and thumbed-nose defiant and the band sound as tight and clear live as on record. Frontman Ezra Koenig’s exuberant hair-tossing and the delirious pogoing of the audience reminded us this was live, however.

A few promising, high-energy newbies were thrown shyly into the mix here and there, offering a tantalising glimpse of what is to come with next year’s release.

No doubt the picture will have become even bigger and even brighter when this charming band returns.