The beauty of Vile’s records is the way his casual vocals ride and his effortless falsetto pops-up above the band’s instrumentation—including his own guitar. Live—at least at the beginning of Tuesday’s performance—his vocals were overpowered by the full intensity of the band, his quirky, matter-of-fact lyrics, swallowed. That imbalanced part of the set included two new songs, “Red Room Dub” and “Zoom 97,” from his May release, Philadelphia’s Been Good to Me, which the tour is drumming and strumming to promote. Fortunately, that deluge subsided a few songs into the set, certainly by the time he got to classic crowd-pleasers “Like Exploding Stones” and “Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone),” along with the new “Chance to Bleed.” Opening the evening was fellow indie rock band Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band.
Philadelphia’s Been Good to Me is Vile’s tenth studio release and the first since the death of his longtime collaborator and bandmate, Rob Laakso. The loss caused Vile to record the album “as if it were” his “last.” Hopefully not. But his own mortality must have formed the backdrop for his latest creation.
Vile, the king of laid-back cool indie rock, deserves a long run, even if he doesn’t engage much with his audience. For this crowd, he only offered an occasional word among screams of, “We love you, Kurt!” avoiding stories behind his songs or bandmates or even mentioning the $40 million renovation of the theatre where he was performing, now configured for standing-room concerts like his. Instead, he pointed to the lobby where the album could be purchased and stuck to his guitar, head lowered, singing behind his chest-length curls. His solo performance of “Runner Ups” was the only moment when he had the full stage to himself.
Both the foot-stomping gallop of “Bassackwards” and the strutting “Check Baby” from Bottle It In (2018) were saved for the encore, along with “Avalanches of Snow,” which floats within a lush sonic realm reminiscent of Roxy Music, with Vile playing trumpet, riding the waves of its hypnotic melody.
David e. Moreno
