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Dell Music Center

2400 Strawberry Mansion Dr, 19132, Philadelphia, PA, US

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Doors open: 19:25

Concert in your area for Indie & Alt, Rock, Folk & Blues, Hip-Hop, and Pop.

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Kurt Vile biography

Kurt Samuel Vile (born January 3rd, 1980) is an American musician from Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, best known for his solo records. He often performs and records with his band, The Violators.

Vile began writing and recording music in his teens, dreaming of emulating heroes like Smog and Pavement and signing to his favourite label, Drag City. His aspirations, though, were at odds with the professional life that he led through his late teens and early twenties, when he led what he’s described as a ‘depressing’ blue-collar life working jobs that included driving a forklift truck. It wasn’t until 2005, when he returned to Philadelphia after a while living in Boston, that he made his start in the music business by forming The War on Drugs with his friend, Adam Granduciel. He continued to work on his own material, too, and a solo album, ‘Constant Hitmaker’, was released in the same year as The War on Drugs’ debut, ‘Wagonwheel Blues’.

From there on in, Vile’s status as a band member or a solo artist became increasingly more muddied; it was his career as the latter that seemed to really take off, meaning that Granduciel toured with him in his backing band The Violators in support of 2009’s ‘Childish Prodigy’. Since then, Vile has split from The War on Drugs, who would go on to huge success with 2014’s ‘Lost in the Dream’, and focused on more solo records that have seen him master his own brand of woozy, freewheeling and often psychedelic rock; ‘Smoke Ring for My Halo’ met with rapturous acclaim in 2011, and its follow-up, 2013’s ‘Wakin on a Pretty Daze’, troubled the right end of many a publication’s end of year best-of list.

Live reviews

Take one look at the man and the band in front of you onstage: all that hair, all those electric guitars, there’s a plaid shirt or two…this is going to be some kind of noisy grunge nonsense, isn’t it? Well, in short, no. Kurt Vile doesn’t do noise. He’ll give you some dope psych/folk jams, though. Vile is perhaps the most unassuming man to ever take to the stage. He hides behind his hair as he and his band The Violators run through extended versions of tracks from Smoke Ring for My Halo, not saying very much and when he does, it’s all delivered rather nervously. What matters most, though, is not that Vile is lacking “bantz”; Vile’s languid solos are what matter, as he takes a track like ‘Jesus Fever’ and lets the running time extend and bend until you don’t recognise the song anymore thanks to his astonishing liquid playing. Even when he drops the electric and picks up an acoustic guitar, Vile manages to manipulate a song so that one minute he’s Dylan, the next he’s Springsteen – this kid is talented. It’s not all completely laid-back mind you; Vile and the Violators can rock out with the best of them and there’s almost a punk element to the glorious ‘Freeway’ and it shakes you right out of the cosmic reverie the preceding tracks had put you in. You won’t come away thinking you were in the presence of a star and showman, but a Kurt Vile set gives you what you need – cracking songs.

Report

AndyHannah

It was fair to wonder when the Pavement went on hiatus after touring in support of their final album Terror Twilight if fans would ever get to see them live again.

It took a number of years, with band members scattered across the country and participating in multiple new projects, but the band have begun performing live again. Although time has passed, the group easily capture the slacker majesty of their heyday as kings of the '90s indie scene.

If the band and audience are a little bit grayer these days, that's OK too. Indeed, a surprising number of people in the audience at a Pavement show are likely far too young to have seen them the first time around and appear to be there to take in the experience as new, rather than relive past glories. The band's sprawling, two hours-plus setlist leaves no one disappointed.

Mercurial frontman Steve Malkmus (whose departure for a solo career shelved the band originally) seems especially energized at these shows, bantering with the audience and belting out should-have-been hits like “Cut Your Hair” and “Stereo” with surprising and obvious joy.

The band's once loose sound has been tightened up considerably, as well. That being said, when the group kicks in to the shambolic, shaggy genius of “Summer Babe” (usually reserved for the encore), they still play fast, loud and jagged and demonstrate why they remain one of the most exciting groups of the past twenty years.

Anonymous