Vampire Weekend / Ra Ra Riot @ Barrowlands, 29 Oct

A night that pairs two of the best bands to come out of America this year was always going to be a big draw, as the battered floorboards of the Barrowlands Ballroom tomorrow morning will no doubt testify. The last time Ra Ra Riot (****) played in Scotland - at last year's Indian Summer Festival - drummer John Ryan Pike had just lost his life in a drowning accident. That performance was, in hindsight, understandably muted and flat. They were a band in mourning. Since then, they've picked up the pieces and continued on without Pike, culminating in the release of their brilliant debut album The Rhumb Line, largely written by their departed friend. There's a lucid air of loss on the album but, like Arcade Fire's Funeral, the melancholy is fused with a sense of celebration, as if they're trying to preserve Pike's presence through their own emotional vitality.

And it's this bullish Ra Ra Riot with which we are faced tonight. The Rhumb Line gets a substantial and breathless run through, with lead singer Wes Miles parading along the front of the stage with urgency and magnetic draw. Theirs is a brand of indie based on the purest of pop melodies and most restless of post-punk rhythmic structures. Naturally, then, the band are at their best when performing at 100mph. Erstwhile poignant tracks like Dying Is Fine are mobilized by blistering energy, the string section working overtime to keep up with the rampant Miles. General consensus is, Ra Ra Riot have won themselves legions of new fans tonight.

Vampire Weekend (****), on the other hand, need little introduction. Their last appearance at Barrowlands was to a handful of early revellers awaiting The Shins this time last year, but what a difference 12 months makes. One of the major success stories of 2008, their set is duly greeted by much chanting and singing, much fist waving and the kind of triumphalism normally reserved for a homecoming, except these boys come from thousands of miles away – and their music has it's roots planted even further afield. The band's performance is a masterclass in proficiency and shows they have stepped up to the plate as headliners fearlessly and oozing with class. Hit singles, Oxford Comma, A-Punk and Mansard Roof which predictably get the loudest cheers, but an interesting take on Fleetwood Mac's Everywhere thrown in on the encore and the surrealist wonder of 2,000 adoring indie kids singing Peter Gabriel's name to the Afrobeat chimes of Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa steal the plaudits of an altogether excellent show. [Finbarr Bermingham]