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Just Like Heaven delivers thrilling sets from Vampire Weekend and Rilo Kiley

May 11, 2025

Vampire Weekend closed out Just Like Heaven on Saturday, with a terrific headlining set that underscored the band’s place at the top of the indie rock scene that the Pasadena festival celebrates.

But let’s come back to them in a minute. Because the biggest moment of the day came just before Vampire Weekend, when Rilo Kiley, which until this month hadn’t played together since the summer of 2008, delivered a nearly perfect set that left fans with broad smiles and a few tears at the reunion that few ever expected to see.

“Can you believe this is our third show in 17 years?” singer Jenny Lewis asked the crowd, noting the band’s out-of-town warmup shows in Ojai and San Luis Obispo last week. “It’s truly amazing to be here with you all.”

Then, looking at her bandmates on stage, added, “But mostly it’s amazing to be here with you all.”

Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend headlines the Just Like Heaven music festival at Brookside at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on Saturday, May 10, 2025. (Photo by Drew A. Kelley, Press-Telegram/SCNG)

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Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend headlines the Just Like Heaven music festival at Brookside at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on Saturday, May 10, 2025. (Photo by Drew A. Kelley, Press-Telegram/SCNG)

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Rilo Kiley’s set opened with “The Execution of All Things,” the title track from its 2002 second album, which provided five of the 13 songs in the set, as fans flowed from the main stage at the opposite end of the festival grounds on the golf course outside the Rose Bowl. “Wires and Waves,” a wistful, longing love song, followed.

“It’s good to see you,” lead guitarist Blake Sennett said before the band launched into a delicious, funky groove on “The Moneymaker. “It’s been a minute.”

That it has. Rilo Kiley formed in the Los Angeles area when Sennett and Lewis, child actors who’d grown up to become a couple, got together with bassist Pierre de Reeder and drummer Jason Boesel in the late ’90s. For a decade, the band grew alongside peers such as Death Cab for Cutie and Bright Eyes to become stars of the indie scene.

But Sennett and Lewis broke up as romantic partners and stress fractures emerged in the band. After a show at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles in June 2008, the band went on hiatus for a few years before Sennett, in an interview, pronounced it as dead as a toe-tagged corpse on a slab in the morgue.

“Now, I see movies where the dead get up and walk,” he said in comments that he later apologized for as a product of frustration. “And when they do that, rarely do good things happen.”

Very good things happened at Just Like Heaven as Rilo Kiley roared back to life on Saturday. Highlights as the set rolled on included the country-ish waltz “I Never,” the heartsick love song “Does He Love You?” and the set-closing “Portions For Foxes,” its most-loved song, and one that saw the crowd take over and loudly sing a final verse to the delight of everyone on stage.

A friend said he’s described Rilo Kiley to his boomer dad as the millennial Fleetwood Mac. He’s not wrong. And, like Fleetwood Mac and other bands where personal relationships and stresses have pulled them apart, Rilo Kiley feels like the comeback could be just as good, if not better, than the first time around.

Vampire Weekend, by contrast, doesn’t seem to have any of that baggage on its tour bus. Singer-guitarist Ezra Koenig, bassist Chris Biao and drummer Chris Thomson have stayed and played together since it formed in 2006, and fleshed out in recent years with another five or so touring musicians, the band seems better each time they come around.

It’s set sqaiezed 22 songs into an hour and 15 minutes and was as delightful, if not quite as long, as the band’s headlining performance at the Hollywood Bowl in June 2024, opening with “Mansard Roof,” closing with “Walcott,” and running through best-loved hits and entertainingly odd covers throughout.

Highlights included “Unbelievers” and “This Life” in the early part of the show, old favorites such as “A-Punk,” which got the crowd singing and dancing along, and “Sympathy,” which featured a gorgeous bit of violin from Isabel Hagen, whose strings added beautiful colors to many songs throughout the night.

“Oxford Comma,” the track on the 2008 self-titled debut album that first brought the band to wider attention, and “Harmony Hall,” a lovely melody off 2019’s “Father of the Bride,” shined later in the set before Koenig announced a change in Vampire Weekend’s usual end-of-show song requests.

Normally, he said, the band takes any request and does their best to perform at least a verse and a chorus. [At the Bowl last year, that saw them attempt, and often fail hilariously, tunes by Steely Dan, the Grateful Dead, and the B-52s.] At Just Like Heaven, though, the band had come up with their own “requests,” picking “indie bangers” by bands that have or could play the Pasadena indie fest.

“Lisztomania” by Phoenix opened up the section, with songs by Tame Impala, Beach House, Grizzly Bear and TV On The Radio, which a few hours earlier had played the same stage, following.

“Now we’re gonna play an indie banger of our own,” Koenig then announced, smiling happily at the fun he and the band had just created. “Wolcott,” the fifth of five songs from the debut record, sent everyone one with more smiles.

Earlier on Saturday, amid scorching heat that neared or reached triple digits, the festival grounds saw plenty of other strong performances. Most of these bands played Coachella in years past when rock was king and pop not yet ascendant at that desert festival.

Empire of the Sun delivered one of the few visually creative sets of the day – indie rock bands aren’t often the most theatrical of performers – with singer Luke Steele changing costumes throughout the set. “Cherry Blossom” might have been the most visually sumptuous of their performances. Steele appeared on stage in the crimson robes and headdress of a feudal Japanese lord on “Shogun” and backing dancers in crimson bobbed wigs and bedazzled kimonos, all of them in front of bonsai tree visuals.

The English band Slowdive hasn’t played a lot in the United States over the decades and fans who turned out to catch them on Saturday where rewarded with a lovely set of the kind of dreamy music that typically gets labeled shoegaze, a label that doesn’t do justice to the beauty of Slowdive’s shimmering sheets of sound. Songs such as “Crazy For You” and “Sugar for the Pill” proved the perfect accompaniment to the sun setting behind the western hills and the arrival of cooler nighttime weather.

TV On The Radio had the misfortune of playing the main stage at the same time Unknown Mortal Orchestra was on the second stage. Singer Tunde Adebimpe said in a recent interview he was disappointed he wouldn’t be able to catch UMO’s performance, and told the crowd on Saturday it was fine with him if they wanted to cut out early to go see singer-guitarist Ruban Nielson and his psychedelic rock outfit.

It truly was a difficult choice to navigate, too. TV On The Radio roared through terrific tunes such as “Young Liars,” “Golden Age” and “Wolf Like Me,” the song Vampire Weekend covered a few hours later. Unknown Mortal Orchestra provided intricate grooves on songs such as “Nerve Damage!” and gorgeous melodies on “Multi-Love” and “Secret Xtians.”

Earlier, in the peak of the heat of the day, Courtney Barnett served a slice of literate garage rock, opening with “Avant Gardener,” bringing out fellow traveler Kurt Vile, one of the few surprise guests of the day, for their duet “Over Everything,” and wrapping up with “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go to the Party.”

Just Like Heaven delivers thrilling sets from Vampire Weekend and Rilo Kiley Orange County Register

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Just Like Heaven delivers thrilling sets from Vampire Weekend and Rilo Kiley

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