![]() ![]() A few songs in, Vile plays a country tune, How Lucky, by the late John Prine – an artist whose “stuff”, according to Dylan, was “pure Proustian existentialism. (Vile’s Instagram post about Laakso was more long-form.) Significantly, Laakso replaced Vile’s previous righthand man – one Adam Granduciel, who bowed out of the Violators in about 2011 to focus on the War on Drugs, a band Vile had played in, early on. Early on, Vile briefly acknowledges Rob Laakso, his bandmate who died last month from cancer aged 44. It might be a total bummer to point it out, but death stalks this lovely set. But a handful of key songs are delivered solo acoustic. Mostly, he is backed by his guitar, bass, drums and synth-augmented band, the Violators (the pun foremost in their name, rather than the suggestion of harm). Vile’s solo here is typical: it could be blistering, but he holds back, forming elegant cat’s cradles instead. Watch Kurt Vile perform Hey Like a Child (live on Late Night With Seth Meyers). One lovely cut from (watch my moves), Hey Like a Child, is a cocktail of twang and mellowness, like having SSRI antidepressants administered through the ear canal. His solos are quite succinct – poppy, even – given the lineage he draws from Neil Young’s songs are often long, intricate guitar workouts. Tonight, Vile’s languid guitar playing feels as conversational as his words. He is a notably American writer, straddling hyper-local considerations (the Philadelphia-specific Loading Zones) as well as a kind of off-the-cuff, everyman cosmic-ness. Like many others, this song takes place “in the dawn’s early light” – a line that teases out another strand in his work. “I wanna live all the time in my fantasy infinity,” he drawls on Girl Called Alex. Vile’s air of copaceticness grows more complicated, too, when the unhurried, often beatific furl of his songs reveals the bleakest of lyrics. ![]() He recently released a one-off song with them, a loving cover of Charli XCX’s Constant Repeat. His daughters are on the cover of (watch my moves) and feature regularly on his Instagram. A bit like Snoop Dogg, Vile is both weed-informed and a family man a renegade and rock solid. If he seems shrouded in recreational substances, well, he might be thinking more clearly than you assume. It might be a total bummer to point it out, but death stalks this lovely set But it’s this being present in the moment that gives Vile the air of a bedheaded savant. (That ass-backwards title is a very Vile turn of phrase.) In song, he is often just waking up – a tradition that harks far back to the blues and other traditional forms. Later on, on Bassackwards, he’ll be “on the beach” but “thinking about the bay”. On the more recent Mount Airy Hill, he’s “thinkin’ about flyin’”. “I think about them all the time,” he sings about a “happily wed” couple on Girl Called Alex, an old tune from 2013’s Wakin on a Pretty Daze album. Playing the second of two sold-out nights in London, and focusing, not particularly exclusively, on (watch my moves), Vile’s songs are often conversational, unguarded. ![]()
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