THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
"This is making me wish I knew more Taylor Swift,” I whisper to my wife as The Vitamin String Quartet smashes thrillingly into another barnstorming arrangement of a Taylor Swift classic (this one happens to be ‘Antihero’).
She nods in agreement.
But Swift-canon ignorance aside, The Vitamin String Quartet, on their first UK tour, rock the doors off the Union Chapel in trendy Islington, North London.
The VSQ have been going in some shape or form for a long time now, since the late ‘90s, and for a good deal of that storied career been achieving enviable notoriety, having soundtracked Westworld and collaborated with a number of artists, but it feels their infectiously catchy string arrangements reached near ubiquity when they soundtracked Netflix’s runaway hit Bridgerton, for which their version of Coldplay’s ‘Yellow’ became famous.
I personally was more familiar with their opening number, Billy Eilish’s unmistakable ‘Bad Guy’ from the last season of Britain’s cultish-to-breakthrough hit, Doctor Who, but however you discover VSQ, their sound and their style are fun, subversive and heartwarming and their shows are an unexpectedly raucous treat.
“This is not a normal classical concert, guys. We feed off your energy and give back what we get!” viola player Thomas Lea assures after an early song. This proves true about four songs in, when violinist Rachel Grace encourages us to sing along, clap and stomp to Sia’s ‘Cheap Thrills’. As an audience, we are more than obliging. The song turns into a rousing banger that significantly increases the energy and engagement.
The VSQ are masterful at working the crowd, cellist Derek Stein [interviewed in The American Issue 804] taking most of the traditional frontman duties, but every member including Lea, Grace and Wynton Grant entertaining the crowd on everything from the tribulations of viola tuning to the eccentric and novel sounds of English expressions like ‘toodle pip’ to Americans.
As well as trying out some new songs on us for the first time (Chappell Roan’s ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ was a crowd pleaser) there were some really innovative pieces that slowed the pace and gently challenged our auditory palates, like the theme to Studio Gibli’s Howl’s Moving Castle and K-Pop band BTS’s hit ‘IDOL’.
If I had any constructive criticism, it would be to add more familiar tunes like Foo Fighters’ ‘Everlong’, Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, and Radiohead’s ‘Creep’, which was marvelous and done as I’d never imagined it but I’m sure Thom Yorke would have loved;. It is probably just the elder millennial in me and I know that there were definitely Swifties in the crowd, but it felt as if they were just as versed in the ‘90s tunes as we were.
But that is slightly churlish carping about a show that could rival any band that will play Union Chapel this year. If you missed them this time around, good news: The Vitamin String Quartet will be back in the autumn touring the UK again so there is still time to get tickets. And really, for musicians this charismatic with stringed instruments, why wouldn’t you?
My only other tiny issue? More encores. Come back out and play more, VSQ! Please!
Read the interview with Vitamin String Quartet in The American here.
