BrightestYoungThings: Kurt Vile returns to D.C

all words: Andrew Bucket
all photos: Nathan Ackerman

Flash back to April of this year. It's a Saturday night and day two of the DNA Test Fest. A packed house at The Velvet Lounge is reeling from a particularly brutal Drunkdriver set--vocalist Micheal Berdan walking dangerously on the rail and swinging from very unstable scaffolding and inspiring the crowd of deranged men and women to punch and elbow each other gleefully.

That hellishly awesome set is what festival curators Sean Gray and Chris Berry put in place "as something people had to suffer through to get to see Kurt Vile."

After the Drunkdriver storm, we got what we came for. Kurt Vile played a set of trippy folk bliss. It might have occured to some people that we were seeing the beginning of a movement. Some kind of new...folk...movement. A more freakish...folk...Freaky Folk? Like a trippy, hip, neo-folk...like a freaky folk?! Freak folk?!

vilepedal

Not even close. It was just another night and happened to be a calm and meditative solo set by one songwriter: Kurt Vile.

Flash forward to November 5th, at the Black Cat backstage. The masses have amassed, probably curious about these Vile legends, probably some there to see this guy Benjy Feree who was curiously added to the bill last minute.

Fan Death Records, the label that first brought Vile to the D.C area in spring 2008, is busting at the seams about the band they've just picked up on their label: Puerto Rico Flowers. A moody, dude-ly band whose vocals stand way out on the edge of the sound-stage for all to hear, nearly naked of any echo or reverb. A definite departure from basically everything that is popular, even Kurt Vile, and it makes absolute sense.

listen to Let's Make Friends by Puerto Rico Flowers

This is what strikes me about Fan Death Records (in dramatic terms): their need to be constantly moving into unknown territory, and away from what has been accounted for.

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Kurt begins the show much in the same way as last spring. Solo on stage with his vocals spaced out and his typical rock and roll hair draped over the mic and obscuring his cherub like face. He looks like a regular dude, and not even the way that the other Kurt (you know who I mean) looked like a regular dude. I mean this Kurt looks like he could work at Whole Foods or Guitar Center. It's not a statement for Vile, it's just the facts.

After a standard solo number, the Violators join him on stage and the set goes plowing ahead with several songs from the recent record on Matador. Second guitarist Jesse (not sure about his last name) is shifting from a wailing harmonica, to a tricked out guitar rig--riding the wammy bar every note of the way. The vibe was something like: if Swell Maps played Farm Aid.

A writer could get sentimental, greedy, over-zealous, verbose, and generally misguided about what this band is, or worse: what they mean. They seem to have everything that a band would need to be the next:_______. But, common. That's a lame game to play. What are we, Spin fucking magazine? Are we Gideon Yago?

Amplifier was probably the best Vile original of the set, while a left-field-as-fuck surprise cover song completely swept everyone away. From the lesser known Thurston Moore/Richard Hell band Dim Stars, the song Monkey was a revelation.

vile2

The hits Dont Get Cute and Freeway came late in the set and were startling with a full band, but definitely commanding. It kind of felt like listening to Rust Never Sleeps all the way through and feeling like you really earned it when Hey Hey My My (into the black) comes on.

The last song was Kurt solo again playing the very serious My Best Friends, and we were right back where we started. It makes me recall what Sean Gray said about Vile in his interview with David Malitz last spring:

"He hasn't just come out of nowhere. He's been doing what he's done for years."

Brightest Young Things

Live DC

Kurt Vile returns to D.C

TUESDAY 3/6

Experience Hendrix 2012 Tribute Tour @ The Music Center at Strathmore

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Andrew Bucket!